Thanks Yves, I think that will work :)
The reason I want to do this is because I'm working on a component to allow multiple filters to be easily assigned to a DataGrid (http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/flexcoders/message/143771), and to also be able to work with multi-dimensional data-structures. For example, if you have an array of items like: { id: 1234, properties: { shape: round, color: blue } etc... } Some of the DataGrid columns will then have data fields like "properties.shape". In order to keep the FilterManager as general as possible and avoid having to require to user to specify this information, I need to be able to use the dataField string to look up the relevant field in the original data source. I hope this is a little more clear. Thanks for your help! Keith