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Reversing a Related Attribute

Overview​

Occasionally, a relationship between two entities is defined as a Related Attribute relationship.
This relationship allows visibility from one entity, but not the other.

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In this case, an instance of Entity A has one Stakeholder related, but the Stakeholder does not have any relationship with Entity A instances.
This situation may lead to unnavigable Xpaths and finally a process hard to automate.

Bizagi allows the data designer to reuse the relationship already defined to create a new one-to-many relationship.
This allows both entities to navigate through each other. Therefore, the design becomes easily navigable through Xpaths.

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Once the relationship is configured:

  • Each Stakeholder instance will have one or many instances related to Entity A.
  • Entity A will be aware of its relationship with the Stakeholder instance.

This procedure avoids the loss of data already stored in the database, making it ideal to redefine a relationship previously deployed.

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In case you only need navigability to display collections in the My Stuff section of the Me Menu in the Work Portal,
consider using Indirect Collections instead of reversing a related attribute.

Re-utilization Procedure​

Having two entities with a Related Attribute relationship,
create a new one-to-many relationship from the entity with any visibility over the other entity.

In this case, a Cargo in the data model has been defined as related with a Freight Dispatch.
Nonetheless, we want every Freight Dispatch instance to be related to all its corresponding Cargo instances,
making it easier to navigate with Xpaths through the data model.

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Steps:​

  1. Right-click the entity with no navigation, in this case, Freight Dispatch, and select Edit attributes.

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  2. Add a new collection of the entity Cargo.

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  3. Once the entity Cargo is selected, a window will appear prompting if you want to reuse the foreign key stored in the entity Cargo.

    • Select the attribute (the attribute displayed has been defined in the entity Cargo).
    • Finally, select OK to save.

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Now, a new one-to-many relationship replaces the previous one,
and the foreign keys stored in the entity Cargo are being reused in this relationship.

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