Adding an host programmatically (name resolution under Windows)

Question

I would like to programmatically add to Windows a name / IP association so that this name can be resolved locally. This does not have to be persisted between reboots.

The only way I now is to add an entry to the "hosts" file, but this feels hacky especially since I would like to automate this.

Is there any way to do this using a command-line tool or a Win32 API? Perhaps by addind an entry to Windows DNS cache or something similar?

Oh, and please state if this solution is Vista-compatible.

Regards.

Edit : Thanks, guy. Sadly, all of your answers indeed involve DNS or other servers. I was looking for a purely local solution which would work on a "standard" Windows installation. Such a thing does not seem to exist, though.

Answer 1

This page lists a bunch of scripts for doing various things with the DNS service, including adding a name to it. This seems to be part of the Windows Management Instrumentation system, which I'm afraid I don't know anything about.

EDIT: There is also this function, which says it can add records to the DNS. Not sure if that means that it actually modifies the DNS server's state, or if it talks about the local resolver. It also requires Windows 2000 Server or greater, so it might be too narrow.