Managing Collections and Queries

  • Article

Microsoft® Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003 collections are groups of resources, such as users, user groups, or SMS clients, that have attributes in common. Collections are designed to gather resources into useful groups that you can manage. You can create collections by specifying individual resources. More commonly, you create queries that define targeted resources, and then use the queries to gather resources into a collection. You do this by specifying query-based membership rules for the collection. A query is a specific set of instructions that you use to extract information about a defined set of objects in the SMS site database. If your SMS site uses Active Directory® discovery methods, then you can create queries from Active Directory objects stored in the SMS site database. You can use queries to create collections, but they are also very useful as standalone objects.

Note

  • All predefined collections and queries that come with SMS 2003 are based on unauthenticated client discovery data, not on inventory data.

Chapter 17, "Discovering Resources and Installing Clients," in the Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003 Concepts, Planning, and Deployment Guide, introduced the concepts of resources and resource discovery. This chapter describes how to manage your SMS resources using collections and queries.

In This Chapter

  • Working with Collections

  • Working with Queries

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