IBM BPM, V8.0.1, All platforms > Get started with IBM BPM > Key concepts > Relationships
Relationship service
The relationship service stores relationship data in relationship tables, where it keeps track of application-specific values across applications and across solutions. The relationship service provides operations for relationship and role management.
How relationships work
Relationships and roles are defined using the graphical interface of the relationship editor tool in Integration Designer. The relationship service stores the correlation data in tables in the relationship database in the default data source that you specify when you configure the relationship service. A separate table (sometimes called a participant table) stores information for each participant in the relationship. The relationship service uses these relationship tables to keep track of the related application-specific values and propagate updated information across all the solutions.
Relationships, which are business artifacts, are deployed within a project or in a shared library. At the first deployment, the relationship service populates the data.
At run time, when maps or other IBM BPM components need a relationship instance, the instances of the relationship are either updated or retrieved, depending on the scenario.
Relationship and role instance data can be manipulated through three means:
- IBM BPM component Java™ snippet invocations of the relationship service APIs
- Relationship transformations in the IBM BPM business object mapping service
- The relationship manager tool
For detailed background and task information on creating relationships, identifying relationship types, and using the relationship editor, see Create relationships topic.
Related concepts:
The relationship service