Association entities

When adding associations to the model for your business portal integration, you may find cases in which additional information can be included in an association. If this occurs, you may want to use an association entity, which is sometimes referred to as an association class.

As an example, the following illustration shows the Lead entity, which has an association relationship to the Salesperson entity. Additional information for this association relationship could be stored, such as the last contact date.

To create an association entity, use the Class tool to add the association entity to your model. Be sure to assign the <<Business Entity>> stereotype to it. Add attributes to the association entity that will store the additional information for the association. Don’t add the <<id>> stereotype to any of the attributes for the association entity. The association entity will be uniquely identified based on the <<id>> fields of the two entities in the association.

Use the Association tool in XDE to add an association relationship between the two entities. Be sure not to use the Directed Association tool. Then use the Association Class tool to draw a dotted-line association from the association entity to the association you just added between the two entities.

The entities in this association relationship must be treated specially when you create the entity maps for them. Refer to Association entities for more information about mapping these entities.