Techniques are described herein for providing protocol extensions to the WS-Enumeration protocol. A selection protocol extension to the WS-Enumeration protocol enables retrieval of partial representations of objects from a directory server. The partial representations include attributes of the objects that are designated via the selection protocol extension. A sorting protocol extension to the WS-Enumeration protocol enables sorting of objects (or partial representations thereof) to be retrieved from a directory server. The selection and sorting protocol extensions are defined in respective XML elements that are distinct from an XML element that defines an object request including a query filter for selecting objects in the directory server. The selection and sorting protocol extensions may be used independently from each other. The computer languages utilized by the aforementioned XML elements need not necessarily be the same. For instance, a different computer language may be used for each.