Modeling many-to-one (M:1) entity relationships Part II

June 25, 2008 19:00 by garrymc

This is the second part of the series which discusses the issues around modeling M:1 (many-to-one) relationships. If you've not read the first part, then its advisable that you read that first before continuing with this part. To keep up to date with this and other blog's you might consider registering with the RSS feed.

Part I: The Problem

Part III: BusinessKey as a value type

Suggested Solution

Having covered the issues with M:1 relationships and the three different types I'll now present a potential solution which provides the necessary foreign key information, but in a more domain model fashion. I'll also point out yet another issue with the original logical model when it comes to actually using it, which I'll also offer up a solution for. More...

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Modeling many-to-one (M:1) entity relationships Part I

June 22, 2008 13:06 by garrymc

Designing a domain model can be a tough job and if you're lucky enough to start from scratch then it becomes even tougher once you apply it to the physical database model. Over the next few posts I' like to discuss the issues we encounter when modeling this relationship type, examine the way its 'normally' done and then present an alternative that I believe presents a more domain model centric view of the world. The series will be broken up into the following sections, with this being the first. To keep up to date with this and other blog's you might consider registering with the RSS feed.

Part I: The Problem

Part II: Suggested Solution

Part III: BusinessKey as a value type

The main issue when designing a domain model is that they don't have these oddities called foreign keys, as the relationships are known by association. However, once you turn your domain model into a database schema we have to start adding all these extra keys, which get worse when you have a M:M (many-to-many) relationship! In this post I'd like to discuss how we normally model the M:1 (many-to-one) relationship and its pitfalls. More...

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