Creating custom relationships

Required permissions

You must have the following user permissions:

• Manage glossary for relationships including artifacts
• Manage catalogs for relationships including assets

Custom relationship metadata

Custom relationships contain the following metadata:

Labels

Character limit of 255. Relationship name for the artifact, asset, or column type at the source end and the target end of the relationship.

Both labels must be unique for the artifact, asset, or column type.

Source and target types

Use Specific item types if you want to restrict which artifacts and asset types can be used for the source or for the target.

Use Any columns to create a relationship type on column level.

Use Any item to create a relationship type between any items.

Cardinality

Select the relationship cardinality type: it specifies how many items (artifacts, assets, or columns) on the source end can be associated with how many items on the target end. You select between one or many.

Restrict by condition

Enable this option to restrict a custom relationship type on the source or target by a primary category. Then, a custom relationship type can only be applied to artifacts in the specified category and all its subcategories.

The restriction can't be edited after creating the custom relationship type.

Name

Character limit of 255. Must be unique for the artifact, asset, or column type.

A new custom relationship can't be created with the same name between the same artifact, asset, or column type if a custom relationship with the same name between the same artifact, asset, or column type was created before.

Description (Optional)

Character limit of 255.

Visibility

Specify whether to show the relationship in business lineage.

Allow to create relationships to targets as Viewer

This setting is only available for artifact to artifact relationships. When you enable Allow to create relationships to targets as Viewer, it is enough if users have the Editor role only on the relationship source - they will still be able to assign this relationship to a target where they have a Viewer role. When disabled, the Editor role is required on both ends of the relationship. This setting can be edited after the relationship is created, however, changing it back to disabled might result in errors when users try to edit the relationship. It is recommended not to modify this setting back to disabled.

Creating a custom relationship

To create a custom relationship:

1. Go to Administration > Configuration and settings > Asset and artifact definitions.
2. On the Custom relationships page, click Add relationship type > New relationship type.
3. Specify the source and target label of the relationship.
4. Edit the unique identifier if required. Unique identifiers are pre-populated automatically based on the labels. They can no longer be edited when the relationship is created.
5. Select which items you want to allow on source and target. If required, add the artifact types, asset types or columns from the list. You can select multiple types.
6. Specify relationship cardinality.
7. Optionally, restrict the relationship types on source or target end by a category.
8. Specify the name and a description.
9. For artifact to artifact relationships, you can enable creating relationships to targets where users only have Viewer role.

The new relationship is available immediately.

Learn more

• Creating custom asset types
• Creating custom properties
• Importing custom properties or relationships from a file
• Managing custom properties, relationships and asset types