I highly suggest anyone having to integrate Macs into a
Windows domain pickup: Apple Training Series: Mac OS X
System Administration Reference, Volume 1, available on
amazon. It covers directory services, including integration
with Open Directory (apple) LDAPv3 (standard *nix) and
Active Directory.

Also, the work around for macs on a network that
uses .local domains from the windows side (and as a side
note, Apple followed the spec for ZeroConf which
uses .local for multicast DNS, MS acknowledges this when
you setup your AD system stating you will have problems
with .local and macs). The trick is to enter in a .local
search domain in each of your macs network preferences,
as this will have Lookupd check with DNS first before
checking MDNS.