Utilizing PWDI Saved Search functionality for iModel connections allows you to select files that match one or more specific attributes.  This is usually done to reflect workflow states or some other business driver.

Since Saved Searches are essentially results of a document query, there are special considerations that are required when using Saved Searches.

• Criteria and Reference files:

Saved Search acquisition explicitly ignores reference files by default.  This is to ensure that the semantic nature of the Saved Search is maintained (as a given reference file may conflict with the save search criteria). However this can be changed by the user (see note below)

From a synchronization standpoint, this means any changes in the saved search result set may have performance issues if there are many Unmap operations. ("Unmap" is when a source file is removed from an iModel)

 Unless explicitly specified within the Saved Search, the latest version will always be returned from PWDI.

• Saved Searches and GCS:

There is no "Spatial Root" defined in a Saved Search by design, however as any iModel must have a GCS location of some kind defined.  Once mapped, the connection which contains the file with the GCS cannot be deleted (because the file cannot be unmapped).

It is therefore required to create a single Connection for the iModel that contains a single, empty file (manually selected) that has the correct geospatial alignment for the project.  In this way, any changes to the result set from the PWDI Saved Search does not impact the spatial root of iModel.

Note: By default Saved Search connections explicitly ignore reference files.  However this can be changed in the Connection Settings panel allowing the user to override this setting. Changing this setting often will create many map\unmap situations and can have negative performance impacts.