I ask me why I cannot issue a include statement
in a masterfile. Data-areas are often identical in layout,
i.e. a IMS root-only database-segment which is backed up in a datawarehouse as a DB2 table or as a sequential file or vice versa.

why not having a syntax like:

FILENAME=IMSDB, SUFFIX=IMS,$
SEGNAME=ROOT ............
-INCLUDE ABC

and member ABC contains:

FIELDNAME=XX, ALIAS=ZZZ, USAGE=A20, ACTUAL=A10, $
FIELDNAME=AA, ALIAS=BBB, USAGE=A20, ACTUAL=A10, $
a.s.o

the definition can now be reused i.e.

FILENAME=SEQFILE, SUFFIX=FIX,$
SEGNAME=ROOT ............
-INCLUDE ABC

no one except me has a need for it ?

I do not believe that WebFOCUS/FOCUS pars master file like procedures. In the case of IMS files. IMS file can have INDEX indicators as part of the ALIAS name which tells WebFOCUS/FOCUS to generate the correct Statements to utilize the keys/indexs/and secondary indexes as well.

As far as DB2 you can create master files with nocols (no columns). However, this can create a performance issue. In that every time column information is needed it must query DB2 to get the information. This can be good if you have a table that is changing quite often. This way there is no need to recreate the master file.

Hope this helps

well, despite of this

my focus is on the statements describing the data.
i don't want annother parsing logic or someting else, only the include facility.
If I accidentically do something wrong (IMS-index against a seq. file) this kind of error is already catched by the masterfile parser.