topic Associations and the 'Source' element in Alfresco Archive

Associations and the 'Source' element

ferdware — Sun, 26 Oct 2014 03:18:42 GMT

I'm new to Alfresco and I have been diligently going through all the developer tutorials, however I do have one question that I can't seem to find the answer for. It has to do with Associations and the 'Source'/'Target' elements. Actually more the source element than the target.If Document-A has a

Re: Associations and the 'Source' element

afaust — Mon, 27 Oct 2014 12:14:33 GMT

Hello,

the use of the "source"/"target" elements can be a bit confusing because not all of the elements contained thereing actually refer to constraints on the association. An association always requires a source and a target. The "mandatory" information affects the source/target types more than it affects the association itself - e.g. if the "source" is mandatory, then no instance of the target type can exist without having an association linking to it from an instance of the source type. It is the same with "many", e.g. "source" => "many" = true means that multiple instances of the source type can have associations to the same instance of the target type.

The effect of "mandatory" is quite extreme and since there is no way to differentiate a "should" and "must" mandatory state (like you can do with mandatory / enforced-mandatory for properties) it is usually kept to "mandatory" = false.

Regards
Axel

Re: Associations and the 'Source' element

ferdware — Mon, 27 Oct 2014 17:19:00 GMT

Thank You very much for your time to explain it to me. I now understand where and how to make use of the directive.

Best Regards.