Does anyone know if there is an official description for the FIM XPath filter dialect akin to the official documentation for XPath in "ww.w3.org/TR"? I am familiar with the usual webpages showing examples for the FIM dialect but haven't seen an official technical specification. Joe Leibowitz

Try this document - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee652287.aspxFrank C. Drewes III - Architect - Oxford Computer Group

Thanks for the link. I have read this one before and see at the bottom a kind of technical reference though it would be useful to know in what exact respects the FIM XPath dialect differs from the w3 specification.Joe Leibowitz

That's true - the FIM document does fairly much stand alone, so you don't have to reference anything else - though it would be a nice point of reference.Frank C. Drewes III - Architect - Oxford Computer Group

For interested persons, I found a thread dealing with this, http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/is/ilm2/thread/bd9771c9-63bc-44c7-bd99-d5ea0a20c68b. Quoting from this thread: "The valid functions that are included in the XPath 2.0 dialect do not necessarly exist in the ILM XPath dialect, and they do not necessarily have the exact same behavior. You should refer to the ILM "2" SDK for guidance on the ILM XPath usage, and not the Microsoft XPath reference, as the two are not identical. The usage of Not() is ILM is different than the Microsoft XPath reference you referred to. ILM "2" does not store objects in XML representation. The XML representation is what is returned through the Web Service, and hence the query dialect is one that allows for reasoning over the XSD schema for these objects. If an object does not have a value for an attribute, when the object is returned through the ILM Web Service, the attribute is excluded, rather than using the <element /> for blank entries." So, here is one difference at least and there are probably others as well...Joe Leibowitz

I found this 2009 blog entry showing how to use 'alltime' and related functions to query FIM, but it seems these functions don't apply anymore, at least as far as I have tried to use them: http://blogs.technet.com/b/doittoit/archive/2009/02/06/ilm-xpath-filter-dialect-fundamentals.aspx node-set allTime(locationPathExpression) The allTime function accepts a valid filter expression in the XPath Filter Dialect as input, and returns the resources matching that expression at any time over the history of the data in the ILM Service database. node-set atTime(locationPathExpression, dateTime) The atTime function accepts a valid filter expression in the XPath Filter Dialect and a DateTime as input. It returns the resources matching that matched the expression at the specific DateTime specified. node-set betweenTime(locationPathExpression, dateTime, dateTime) The betweenTime function accepts a valid filter expression in the XPath Filter Dialect, two DateTime values as input, and returns the resources matching that expression at any time between the two DateTimes specified. Does anyone have experience working with these functions? J_LJoe Leibowitz