KiXtart 2010

Up until recently, my use of KiXtart against NT accounts had been limited to extracting info using GetObject(). Two weeks ago the need to be able to update the profile path for several accounts arose. I already had a batch file that relies on the NET USER command so it is limited to PCs on a certain domain, which shall be called M3. Most of our PCs are not members of the M3 domain so the script isn't widely usable. I knew about SetInfo() but was afraid to try it , not to mention that the chance never came up. Came up it finally did and I was able to put SetInfo() through its pace. I had a new script ready for this past Friday's migration of some 200+ home folders and 400+ profile folders. (In case you wonder why the discrepancy, my counterpart in the deletion department do a horrible job of keeping the data server clean. With every migration I always discover dead folders that should be deleted long ago but instead sit around eating up precious server space.) It turned out the folders belong to users on two different domains, M2 and M3, and together there were about 400 accounts to update to point their profile paths to the new server. No problem!

This week, I started to use KiXtart 2010, aka KiXtart 4.50. I've been using KiX 3.x and its lack of a SUBSTR command finally got the better of me. I love manipulating strings with LEFT(), RIGHT(), etc, and the lack of SUBSTR in 3.x finally became unbearble. Why write a User-Defined Function (UDF) if the function is already included?