Relationships Types

A relationship type categorizes relationship phrases and roles that determine the nature and purpose of a relationship. A relationship type defines the aspects of a relationship, such as the roles of the subject and object, business rules, and phrases that describe the relationship.

A relationship uses the relationship type to define how a party is related to another party. You can manage relationship types from the Manage Relationship Types task.

The components of a relationship type are:

Relationship phrase pair and role pair
Relationship characteristics

Relationship Phrase Pair and Role Pair

A relationship type contains a relationship phrase pair and a role pair. These pairs define the mutual roles that the two parties play in a relationship, as shown in the following table.

Pair	Purpose	Direction of Relationship Matters	Example for Employment Relationship Type
Role Pair	Describes the roles of the entities.	No	Employee and Employer. For example, Bill has the role of an employee, and Oracle has the role of an employer.
Relationship Phrase Pair	Describes the roles of the entities in the relationship.	Yes	Employee of and Employer of. For example, Bill is employee of Oracle.

Pair

Purpose

Direction of Relationship Matters

Example for Employment Relationship Type

Role Pair

Describes the roles of the entities.

Employee and Employer.

For example, Bill has the role of an employee, and Oracle has the role of an employer.

Relationship Phrase Pair

Describes the roles of the entities in the relationship.

Yes

Employee of and Employer of.

For example, Bill is employee of Oracle.

Relationship Characteristics

Relationship types include rules that define how you can use the relationship type.

When defining a relationship type, you can define the relationship to be one of the following:

Circular
Related to self

The following table explains these characteristics.

Relationship Characteristic	Description	Example
Circular	The relationships between two parties forms a loop.	A competitor relationship type links two organization parties. In this scenario, ABC Corp is a competitor of XYZ Corp, and XYZ Corp is also a competitor of ABC Corp.
Related to self	The subject and the object of the relationship are the same.	A subsidiary relationship type links a subsidiary organization ABC to a parent organization XYZ. The parent organization XYZ, in turn, is linked to itself as a subsidiary using the same relationship type.