I guess when during migration to 4.0 I will face rebuilding this procedure, I would likely come back to the idea of using the discussed XML export/import process. Hopefully by that time this could be API'd or at least will be available to WAR user and maybe with possibility to run in a command line (any option that would allow script it or be launchable from the application would be great help - people that are coming from UNIX world are geeky and don't mind do low level manual tasks, people that are coming from MS side usually are picky about usage

).
BTW, Java of course not at the top of my resume but I don't understand why sman.exe cannot be shipped with WAR downloads.
Also, the discussion about this feature reminded me that I actually can enhance my current script (its portion that clones filters) to use GUID text replacement instead of parsing and reassembling
