Logical to Physical with Polyglot Relationships

Polyglot relationships are defined at a conceptual and logical level, independently of any physical technology.  When you derive a physical model from a Polyglot model, each relationship is translated into a construct supported by that target.

 

During derivation, relationships are translated in the most appropriate way for each target, based on:

• what the target supports,
• and what you expressed in the Polyglot model.

 

Targets with Foreign Key / Foreign Master

This includes relational databases, NoSQL databases with the exclusion of graph database (see below), and all targets that support relationships, even if not enforced:

• relationships already defined as Foreign Key / Foreign Master are derived as-is.
• many-to-many relationships without relationship attributes may result in an associative table for relational targets (configurable, enabled by default).
• relationships that carry attributes are not directly supported by these targets. They are converted into a Foreign Key-based relationship, without Foreign Key constraint defined.

 

Note: materializing relationships carrying attributes as associative tables containing these attributes is planned but not supported yet.

 

Targets with Edges (graph databases)

For graph-only targets, all relationships become edges.

• all Polyglot relationships are derived as edges, regardless of how they were modeled.
• linked entities become source and target nodes.
• direction follows the graph convention (out-node → in-node), using the order of linked entities.

 

Polyglot to Polyglot

When deriving a Polyglot model into another Polyglot model, nothing changes.

 

All relationships are preserved as-is, including their structure, their properties, and their modeling intent.

 

Not derived information

Some relationship properties are conceptual or logical only and are not propagated to physical models, regardless of the target:

• verbs,
• roles,
• constraint type (identifying vs non-identifying).

 

These properties enrich understanding in Polyglot but do not currently map to physical constructs.