## Find assets by criteria (Python SDK)

URL: https://docs.atlan.com/product/capabilities/build-apps/sdks/python/how-tos/find-assets

> Find and retrieve assets by criteria using the Atlan Python SDK (pyatlan), contrasting traversal and search methods.

# Get all assets that...

One of the most common starting points for an algorithm is to retrieve all assets that meet certain criteria.

To contrast approaches, let's start with an example:

- Imagine you might want to do something with all the columns in a particular schema (irrespective of the table or view they're in).

## As traversal

You might logically consider the problem as a traversal:

> *Traversal algorithm (pseudocode) — see full content on the documentation site.*

</details>

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> *3. Retrieve all the views in that schema. — see full content on the documentation site.*

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> *While logical, this will be resource-intensive and time-consuming — see full content on the documentation site.*

## As search

In almost all cases, you can more quickly accomplish your goal by using search. For the example above:

> *Search-based algorithm (pseudocode) — see full content on the documentation site.*

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> *Less code (fewer loops), and faster to run — see full content on the documentation site.*

:::tip[In general when you want to get many assets, think search first]
This was only one example to show the approach. The sections below illustrate a number of them, but you may have many, many others.

Each of these can be accomplished through a search—you just need to define the appropriate criteria! To do that, you might want to read up a bit more on [search in general](https://docs.atlan.com/llms/platform/python/references/llms.txt). It's incredibly powerful, but we know it'sn't trivial to understand when you're first getting started.

**Top tip**: you can *combine* these examples together to form an even more powerful query, using [compound queries](https://docs.atlan.com/llms/platform/python/compound/llms.txt).
:::

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