Remote reference name and target type ID

Target type IDs

A relationship must always declare at least one target type ID that is the intended target of the relationship. For example, the Equipment type declares a relationship called Manufacturer with a target type ID of Company:

{

"id": "Equipment",

"name": "Equipment",

"description": "A piece of equipment",

"state": "Active",

"typeCode": "Object",

"baseTypeId": "BaseAsset",

"properties": [],

"relationships": [

{

"id": "Manufacturer",

"name": "Manufacturer",

"description": "The company that manufactures this equipment",

"targetTypeIds": [ "Company" ],

"state": "Active",

"remoteReferenceName": "Products"

}

]

}

The target type ID indicates which types of objects are considered valid targets of the given relationship. To say that the Manufacturer relationship has a target type ID of Company means that the Manufacturer relationship can target only those entities that have a component of type Company.

Declaring a reverse lookup using remote reference name

A remote reference name declares a reverse lookup on a relationship. For example, with the types given above, any entity of type Company will have an implicit relationship with the Equipment type called Products that will perform the reverse lookup, answering the question "What equipment declares this company as its manufacturer?"

Therefore, when looked at from the point of view of the Equipment, one can traverse the relationship in one direction to the Manufacturer, but with the declaration of the remote reference name, one can also traverse the relationship in the opposite direction, using Company.Products to retrieve a list of all Equipment that has the company as its manufacturer.

Uniqueness of remote reference name

Since a remote reference name essentially declares a relationship on the types targeted by the relationship, the system checks that the name does not collide with any property or relationship name or ID within the targeted hierarchies. So if the Company type, or some parent or child type of Company, has already declared a member named Products, the system would reject using it as the remote reference name on equipment.