LDAP Column Order of CSVDE Export

Question

I am facing the problem, that the csvde.exe export from an ActiveDirectory changes the order of the columns. I am aware of the following line in the CSVDE documentation:

LDAP can return attributes in any order, and csvde does not attempt to impose any order on the columns.

I also saw this question. However I was wondering why LDAP is returning different orders on different pcs or even on different queries. Let me show you an example:

These are the two commands:

csvde -u -f userdata_it.csv -d "ou=it,dc=your-company,dc=org" -l objectClass,SamAccountName,CN,Distinguishname,memberOf

csvde -u -f userdata_entwicklung.csv -d "ou=entwicklung,dc=your-company,dc=org" -l objectClass,SamAccountName,CN,Distinguishname,memberOf

The are exactly the same, expect for the organisational unit. But I have a pc, that will get the csvcolumn order for the first query: objectClass,SamAccountName,CN,Distinguishname,memberOf

And for the second query:
objectClass,SamAccountName,CN,memberOf,Distinguishname

I was wondering why this is happening? Because on another pcthis works like expected. Are there any known solutions? Maybe another program than csvde?

Answer 1

The results of an LDAP search is not repeatable, that is, the ordering is not repeatable, or predictable. LDAP clients must not assume ordering of the entries, attributes, or attribute options in an LDAP search result.

see also

• LDAP: Ordering
• LDAP: Programming Practices