Configuration Manager Collection Limiting
Applies To: System Center Configuration Manager 2007, System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2, System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R3, System Center Configuration Manager 2007 SP1, System Center Configuration Manager 2007 SP2
Collection limiting, in Configuration Manager 2007, limits the results of a resource or inventory query to resources that belong to a certain collection. This can be used to filter query results, but it is most often used as part of resource security to view inventory and resource instances when users do not have class-level read or read resource credentials. In SMS 2.0, to view instances of a secured resource, users had to limit a query to a collection for which they had instance-level read credentials. To view inventory (or inventory history), users had to limit a query to a collection for which they had read resource credentials. If collection limiting was not enabled, no results were displayed.
Automatic Collection Limiting
SMS 2003 introduced automatic collection limiting. Collection limiting still works as it always did if it was explicitly specified, but if users do not specify any collection to which to be limited, Configuration Manager limits the result set to members of all collections for which the user has appropriate credentials. If a user queries against resources alone and does not specify a collection to which to be limited, the user sees only the resources that belong to collections to which the user has read credentials. If a user queries against inventory, the user sees only the inventory for resources that belong to collections to which the user has read resource credentials.