vSphere Methods for Property Collection

The PropertyCollector supports the following approaches to obtaining objects and properties from the server:

• If your client application does not keep a synchronized representation of server state, use the RetrievePropertiesEx method. RetrievePropertiesEx instantiates a filter, collects the specified objects and properties, and returns the data to your client application as an ObjectContent data object. The server does not add the filter to the PropertyCollector.filter array. The server destroys the filter after returning the results to your client.
• If your application maintains a synchronized representation of server state, use the CreateFilter and WaitForUpdatesEx methods. WaitForUpdatesEx returns descriptions of property changes, organized by the filter that identified the properties.

In either case, you create a PropertyFilterSpec data object to specify the objects and properties you want to retrieve from the server.

The following table shows the PropertyCollector methods organized by the context in which you use them. For more information about these methods, see the vSphere API Reference.

Method Context	Method	Description
Monitor properties using different filters	CreatePropertyCollector	Creates a new PropertyCollector object to monitor properties using different filters. The vSphere server handles requests for a PropertyCollector instance independently of any other instances of the PropertyCollector on the server.
	DestroyPropertyCollector	Destroys an instance of a PropertyCollector that was created by a call to CreatePropertyCollector from your client application.
Single collection operation	RetrievePropertiesEx	Retrieves property data for the managed objects specified by a single-use PropertyFilterSpec.
	ContinueRetrievePropertiesEx	Retrieves additional property data for an operation started by RetrievePropertiesEx.
	CancelRetrievePropertiesEx	Cancels a RetrievePropertiesEx or ContinueRetrievePropertiesEx operation.
Incremental collection or monitoring operation	WaitForUpdatesEx	Retrieves changes to property data since the last WaitForUpdatesEx cycle. WaitForUpdatesEx blocks until one or more changes are detected or until the request times out.
	CancelWaitForUpdatesEx	Cancels a WaitForUpdatesEx operation.
General	CreateFilter	Creates a new instance of a PropertyFilter managed object.