Object relationship

Last updated: July 20, 2023

The creation and maintenance of a record, which depicts an association of objects to other objects.

Relationship can be created as:

One object to another object, termed as one-to-one
One object to many objects, termed as one-to-many
Many objects to one object, termed as many-to-one

The relationship record is created such as to allow bi-directional access, i.e. if A is related to B, then by accessing B the relationship to A is detectable.

When objects are described in relationships to one another, the following terminology apply to the objects:

When an object A is configured from two components B and C, B and C are child objects to parent object A. In this example, the relationship of A to B and C is also described as a single level relationship and is reported as a single level object list for A.
As per example above, B as child object to A, can also be a parent to child objects D and E.
When cascaded from parent A to child objects D and E, the term multi-level relationship is used and reported as a multi-level list object list for A.
When a continuum of relationships of the same objects is defined by one-to-many relationships, it is termed a tree-type-breakdown.
When a continuum of relationships of the same objects is defined by any combination of one-to-many, many-to-one, or circular reference to objects, it is termed a network.

See also DOCUMENT RELATIONSHIP and LINKS.