Because searching an Active Directory server is potentially resource intensive, the ActiveDirectoryMembershipProvider.EnableSearchMethods property enables you to turn off search-oriented System.Web.Security.ActiveDirectoryMembershipProvider methods. The ActiveDirectoryMembershipProvider.EnableSearchMethods property is set in your application's configuration file using the enableSearchMethods attribute of the membership element.

When the ActiveDirectoryMembershipProvider.EnableSearchMethods property is false, the following methods are not available:

• ActiveDirectoryMembershipProvider.FindUsersByName(string, int, int, Int32@)

• ActiveDirectoryMembershipProvider.FindUsersByEmail(string, int, int, Int32@)

• ActiveDirectoryMembershipProvider.GetAllUsers(int, int, Int32@)

The provider uses a subtree search starting at the search point specified in the connection string. See the System.Web.Security.ActiveDirectoryMembershipProvider class topic for more information about connection strings.

We recommend that you do not enable searching on production systems until you have confirmed that the search queries issued by the System.Web.Security.ActiveDirectoryMembershipProvider class do not adversely impact your directory server's performance. Since the System.Web.Security.ActiveDirectoryMembershipProvider class is designed for a stateless Web environment, it is unable to use the paging optimizations exposed by the underlying System.DirectoryServices APIs. This means that paging operations during searches against large directories are very expensive and should be avoided. Search operations are always issued against the directory server configured in the connection string, or an automatically selected server in the case of a connection string pointing at a domain. The provider does not use a global catalog for its search methods.