CRITERIA INCLUDE and EXCLUDE

You can use INCLUDE and EXCLUDE filters when retrieving records.

The INCLUDE filter for catalog-centric requests plays a role in the directing the catalog search as follows:

EXPLORE uses the DSN INCLUDE filter to determine how and where to retrieve records. For example: DSN EQ ** uses one strategy to retrieve all of the records, but DSN EQ PAYROLL.** uses an alternate strategy to retrieve only those records beginning with PAYROLL in the key in the user catalog associated with the PAYROLL alias.
However, if a UCAT filter is specified, then EXPLORE ignores the master catalog's catalog aliases and directly searches the specified catalogs. A UCAT specified in both the INCLUDE and EXCLUDE parts of CRITERIA specifies the searched catalogs. Example:
```
EXPLORE CRITERIA(                                    - 
    INCLUDE( DSN EQ **   AND UCAT EQ USERCAT.UCAT* ) - 
    EXCLUDE(                 UCAT EQ USERCAT.UCAT2 ) - 
) DSNLISTFILE(SYSPRINT)
```

EXPLORE transforms the catalog-structured records into a simpler set of internal-format records which consist of a base segment of data set component data followed by an array of volume segments.

EXPLORE generally retrieves catalog data sequentially but also goes directly after related records so that the catalog data is presented in groups based on the parent record. For example, if a path record is found for a data set, its associations are used to retrieve all of the cluster's components together. However, EXPLORE will not directly follow the associations of SYMBOLICRELATE aliases, because its related NONVSAM or GDG records do not have the usual association to the alias.

Table 1. Catalog records versus EXPLORE's internal record types
Catalog record type	Record type name	EXPLORE records generated	ICFLIST parent type
A	NONVSAM	A-NONVSAM,HFS,PDSE, etc. X-ALIAS (data set aliases)	A
B	GDG	B-GDGBASE H-GDS X-ALIAS (data set aliases)	B
J	GDG extension	See catalog record type B
C	CLUSTER	C- any of the VSAM cluster types including VSAMC, KSDSC, RRDSC D- any of the VSAM data components such as KSDSD, VSAMD, AIXD, ESDSD, LDSD I- any of the VSAM index components such as KSDSI, VSAMI, AIXI R-PATH G-AIXC	C
E	CLUSTER extension	See catalog record type C
R	PATH	See catalog record type C
T	TRUENAME	See catalog record type C
U	UCAT connector	U-USERCAT, USERCATC D-USERCATD I- USERCATI	U
X	ALIAS	X-ALIAS See catalog record type A for data set aliases See catalog record type U for catalog aliases

EXPLORE selects from these internal records using both the INCLUDE and EXCLUDE filters to be used in the selected outputs from EXPLORE. For ICF-LIST requests, EXPLORE also includes all subsequent records related to the selected record (the CRITERIA are not checked), so that the related data can appear in the ICF-LIST report.

This ICF-LIST selection process means:

The additional related records are also then written to the extract file if specified.
The ICF-LIST report is most consistent when EXPLORE has filters that apply only to the parent record type records. Filters that refer to non-parent records may have unexpected results.