Using XPath Expressions with the vCenter Plug-In

You can use the finder methods in the vCenter plug-in to query for vCenter inventory objects. You can use XPath expressions to define search parameters.

The vCenter plug-in includes a set of object finder methods such as getAllDatastores(), getAllResourcePools(), findAllForType(). You can use these methods to access the inventories of the vCenter instances that are connected to your vRealize Orchestrator server and search for objects by ID, name, or other properties.

For performance reasons, the finder methods do not return any properties for the queried objects, unless you specify a set of properties in the search query.

You can consult an online version of the Scripting API for the vCenter plug-in on the Orchestrator documentation home page.

Important: The queries based on XPath expressions might impact the vRealize Orchestrator performance because the finder method returns all objects of a given type on the vCenter side and the query filters are applied on the vCenter plug-in side.