Reltio Connect

Dear Reltio team, we have three relation types Direct, Bi Directed and Uni Directed, Can I know what is the advantage of using every relation type ?
Does this affect any functionality if we use Uni Directed in place of Directed. Where can I find the documentation for this ?

Thanks & Regards

Hi,

In Reltio the relationship type represents the connection between two entities. Each relationship type has attributes (name, description, direction, start/end object, etc.) that have different metadata properties which you can configure.

You can find more configuration details here - Configuring Relationship Types

The direction property of a relationship defines how the 2 connected entities relate to each other. There are three types of directions:

• directed - This is the default value. It is used when you want to connect two objects that represent different business values.
  • The roles of the two entities are not equal and do matter, therefore it has one-sided meaning.
  • For example, Parent -> Child relationship (we can say A is parent of B).
  • The advantage of using the directed relationship type is that it enables you to model real-world hierarchies easier and enables top-down/bottom-up traversals.
• undirected - It is used when you want to connect two objects where the role hierarchy does not matter.
  • There is no direction and no reverse meaning is needed.
  • Example use cases are household grouping (Individuals share the same address), colleagues in the same department, professionals in the same field.
  • The advantage here is that it minimizes overhead as it doesn't need logic for role or confirmation and makes it simpler to implement when no interaction is needed.
• bidirectional - It is used when both objects are equal and play the same role. The relationship goes both ways.
  • Example use cases are spouses, social media friendship, business partners.
  • The advantage of using this type is that it enables real-world modeling of agreements and co-ownerships and enforces symmetry in data.

At first sight, undirected and bidirectional may seem similar because they both suggest a connection that exists in both directions. The main difference in Reltio context is that with bidirectional relationships there is a mutual agreement required. We can think of it as a two-way contract, whereas with undirected relationships we are saying that entity A and entity B are related in some way and that is all.

Having such configuration options for the relationship types implies that you should choose very carefully your start and end objects.

In directed relationships, Reltio stores start and end object with clearly defined roles. If you change this to undirected, Reltio loses the concept of hierarchy and can't tell who is in charge. This may have impact on the business logic and rules and analytics and reporting as they may become ambiguous.

I am sharing two more pages that can be useful when configuring relationships:

• Creating New Relationship Types through the Data Modeler Console App
• Relations API

I hope this helped clarify the issue. Please don't hesitate to reach out if you need any further assistance.

Regards,