I have an application with different volumes for each branch office but the same dictionary structures (to enable individual indexing).

When we change items in the master dictionaries we use a utility that browses through the dictionary items of each branch and compares it to the master. In a second step the branch-dictionaries get updated and compiled.

After the update, when making the comparison in some dictionary entries I come across field 28 with the value of '1' in the master and '' in the branch, after updating.

What is this field used for (dict.voc describes it as master.flag)?

Should this field be overwritten, or what happens, if I do not update the value for {master.flag} in the corresponding branch dictionary item?

Thanks in advance.

Wilhelm

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From doing a "LISTDICT VOC" and pressing the F1 (help) key:

Mstr  Specifies that this is the master field definition which is used
      to determine how to read and write data to the file.  If this
      column contains an N (no) or null, the field is a synonym.

Example: let's say I have a field for Date of Birth: DOB which I normally want oconved as D4/. Suppose for some reports I only want to show a 2 digit year and thus add to the dictionary a synonym DOB_YY. By having DOB marked as "master" I would know what the preferred i/oconv masking is and what sort of data to expect.

Also, I recall that you should only put indexing on the Master field.

Mike Ruane

Two additional questions:

1) If I copy field descriptions from one dictionary to another, do I have to update then field 28, or does ARev (through BFS, MFS or COMPILEDICT) take care of the value?

2) From what I understand, master flag in symbolics must be "". Is this correct?

Thanks

Wilhelm

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