Creating or modifying Foundation data associations

An association allows you to define and manage relationships between data elements in the Foundation library. In the Foundation CDM, BMC Helix Platform provides out-of-the-box associations that you can use for your data model, or you can create new associations to support your data model.

You can define a data model for an application by using association definitions. These association definitions are created by associating two records with association roles. 

For example, the Organization model is defined by creating the associations as shown in the following image:

• The Support Group Applications Support is associated to the Department Data Center Support.
• Similarly the Department Data Center Support is part of the Business Unit Research and Development.
• And the Business Unit Research and Development is associated to the Operating Organization Calbro Services. 

An association can be of following types:

Direct association

A direct association is a direct relationship between two records, such as one-to-one or one-to-many relationships. Multiple fields of one record and multiple fields of other records can be a part of the association. Use this association whenever there is a parent-child type of relationship; for example, Vendor Organization to Business Unit association is an example of a direct association.

If you delete a parent record with the Cascade Delete flag set to True, the child records are automatically deleted also. If you delete the parent records with the Cascade Delete flag set to False, the child records are not deleted; however, the foreign key in child records is set to NULL. 

Indirect association

An indirect association defines an indirect relationship between two records in an association; the records can be related to each other by using a third record in many-to-many relationship. Use this association to define a peer relationship or a loose relationship, such as an Employee to Department association is an example of a indirect association.

Self association

A self association defines a relationship in which a self record definition is associated to itself. The relationship can be direct or indirect. In an Employee to Manager association, a manager belongs to the manager role and also to an employee role.

For more information on creating associations, see Creating record associations. 

The following topics explain how to create associations for Foundation data:

• Associating Organization data with other types of Foundation data
• Associating Person data with other types of Foundation data
• Associating Location data with other types of Foundation data
• Associating Categorization data with other types of Foundation data
• Associating Geography data with other types of Foundation data

Related topic

Foundation data library and data model