Creating relationships

A relationship can be defined between any two nodes in the metagraph.

If you plan to create a view for the metagraph, note these relationship limitations:

  • A node can only be the target of a single relationship.
  • The primary node cannot be the target of any relationships.

These relationships can be modeled for documentation purposes. Yet, you must remove them when publishing a view to Data Lake.

This table shows the icons used in this procedure:

Name Icon Description
Delete nt_ico_df_delete To remove a property mapping.
Reset nt_ico_df_reset To clear all property mappings.

This table shows the icons used to indicate the data type of each property in the Property Mapping drop-down menus:

Data Type Icon
String nt_ico_df_string
Number or Integer nt_ico_df_number
Boolean nt_ico_df_boolean
Date nt_ico_df_date
Date Time nt_ico_df_date-time
Time nt_ico_df_time

To create a new relationship:

  1. Pause on a node until a small circle is shown at the top of the node. This is called the port.
  2. Click the port and drag your cursor on top of the node to relate it to.
    After the second node shows a blue border, you can drop the relationship line.
  3. The side panel opens and you can start specifying the relationship.
    It is not required to define the relationship now. If you close the panel without defining the relationship, then it is considered incomplete and displayed in the model as a dotted line.
  4. Use the drop-down menus to select a property.
    To define multiple property mappings, click Add Property Mapping.

    To remove a property mapping, click Delete in that row.

    To clear all property mappings, click Reset.

  5. Click Next.
  6. Select the Join Type for the relationship.
    By default, INNER JOIN is selected.
  7. Click Next.
  8. Optional, specify a label for the relationship.
    It is not required to specify a label now, you can do that later.
  9. Click Finish to complete the relationship definition.

    When you click Finish, the side panel closes, and the relationship line becomes solid.

  10. Click Save.