Managing Relations

Relations represent connections and dependencies between object types. While new, isolated object types for different types of entities are defined in the Object Type Customizer, the next important step is to pull the data together in meaningful ways. It is necessary to set the relations between them in order to be able to start working with the object types in a productive way. In Valuemation, this step can be done in the Relation Customizer.

We distinguish among three basic types of relations:

• n:1 relation

  This type of relation links several objects to one object. For instance, several persons can belong to one department. The key to the department business object is an attribute in the Person business object.

• 1:n relation

  This relation is the corollary of the n:1 relation. This relation type links an object to several objects. The same department can be entered in many (n) different Person business objects.

• m:n relation

  This type of relation is more complex. An object can have 'n' number of linked 'm' objects and vice versa.

  • Example: A typical example of a m:n relation would be the relation between system(s) and a cost center(s). One system can be paid by several cost centers but also a given cost center will typically pay for several systems. To make the m:n relation, a special relation table with foreign keys pointing to both sides needs to be created. Any n:m relation must always be built as a composite of existing 1:n and n:1 relations.

Valuemation also makes use of a special kind of m:n relation, called Time Related Relationship.