Directory Programming .NET

I would like to be able to learn/capture information about a generic X.500 Directory Tree so that I can use it to optimize LDAP requests.  I cannot search the entire tree at once due to response size constraints. I need to identify the branches, the number of entries directly beneath each branch and the total number of entries beneath them in the tree. 

Part of the problem is to determine how to:
1) learn/capture the tree structure efficiently and in an automated fashion.
2) determine a way to represent the metadata so that it can be used efficiently within the program (e.g., DSML XML, binary objects, B+Trees).

It would also be nice if there was a way to ascertain what adds/deletions have occurred since a given date so that the metadata can be updated incrementally.

Any ideas?

Thanks .. John

You will have to search using OneLevel scoping and paging.  Depending on your preference, you can do this with the DirectoryEntry or the .Protocols equivalents.  Further, if you are only discovering the topology of the directory (as opposed to the objects it contains), you would simply filter for containers or organizationalUnits.  That should keep the size and resources required to execute such a search down.

This is how a lot of tree view controls work (only search on expand, only the scope of the node).

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Ryan Dunn
Extemporaneous Mumblings
The .NET Developer's Guide to Directory Services Programming