Related Objects

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About Related Objects

A Related Object is a participant in an Object Relationship.

If the record you are viewing is the target of a Lookup, then one or more records in another object could be pointing to it. The referencing object is Related Object, that contains one or more Related Records. (When viewing data, those records are displayed in the Related Information section of the record you are viewing.)

For example, in the Sample Order Processing System, records in the OrderItems object "look up" to records in the Orders object. When viewing an Order record, those records appear in the Related Information section. When entering an Order, the Form may display them in a Subform (a table of related records).

On the other hand, when the record you are viewing has a Lookup to another object, the referenced object (or target object) is also a Related Object. But there can only be only one target record for the Lookup field.

So:

From the standpoint of the Orders record:

• There can be multiple related records in the OrderItems object.
• When you view an Order, the related records appear in the Related Information section of the Order form.

From the standpoint of an OrderItems record:

• Orders is a related object.
• There can be only one, so the identifying information for the Order is displayed as part of the OrderItems record.

Learn more:

• Relating Objects Using Lookups
• Understanding Object Relationships
• Composite Objects

Working with Related Objects

Reading the Relationship Grid

The relationship grid displays objects that are related to the current object by Lookup fields, and shows how the objects are related:

In the Cases object, for example, in the Object Relationships the relationship grid contains lines that look something like this:

Relationship Type	Object	Alias	...
Many to One	Accounts

The way to read that line is "Many (Cases) to One (Account)". Or, in general terms:

"Many (of the current object) to One (of the object on this line)"

The grid columns show:

Column	Content
Relationship Type	Cardinality of the relationship: One to many, many to one, or many to many.
Object	The object at the other end of the relationship. Click this link to Manage the Object Relationship.
Alias	The name given to the relationship, for use in Composite Object operations.
Junction To	If the relationship is many to many, then the object is a Junction Object. This column gives a link to the object on the other side of the junction.
Cascade Rules	In this section, you establish the Cascade Rules that govern Composite Object operations.

Editing Relationships

To change an object relationship, click the name of the related object in the grid.

Considerations

• For Many to One relationship, only Alias and Update Cascade Rule is available to update
• Relationship Alias is a required field and it should be unique for a given base object
  • Alias cannot be "Users" or "User"
  • A Relationship Alias can only contain alphanumeric characters or the underscore (_) character

Deleting Relationships

Relationships are formed by Lookup fields. To delete a relationship, delete the lookup field that created it.