You build the business entity model by adding nodes of different types. Each node type defines the nature of the relationship between the parent node and child node.
The business entity model can contain the following node types:
Business entity name
The name you give the business entity establishes the root node of the business entity.
one
Specifies a one-to-one relationship between a parent node and a child node.
For example, a one-to-one relationship between a Contact Address node and an Address node means that each contact address can only have one address associated with it. A person can have a home contact address and a work contact address, but only one address can be associated with the home contact address and only one address can associated with the work contact address.
many
Specifies a one-to-many relationship between a parent node and a child node.
For example, a one-to-many relationship between a Person node and a Telephone node means that a person record can have many telephone number records associated with it.
lookup (referenceOne)
Specifies a one-to-one relationship between a parent node and a child reference entity node.
For example, a referenceOne relationship between a Person node and a Gender node means that a person record can be associated with only one gender value. The gender values reside in a lookup table.
The following image shows the node types for each node in the business entity example:
You can also configure the lookup business entity field to point to another business entity, instead of a reference entity. For example, the Person business entity can refer to the Automobile or Organization business entity.
The Data Director user interface depends on the object that you select. The following criteria affect the Data Director user interface:
If the selected object is a reference entity, the business entity data view in edit mode renders this lookup field as a drop-down field.
If the selected object is a business entity, the business entity view shows a link to the referenced business entity.
Both fields appear as text fields in any read-only view. For example, they appear as text fields in the History, Match and Merge, and Cross-reference Records views.