Relationship Definitions

Relationship:

A natural business association between 1 or more entities.

Recursive Relationship:

A relationship that exists between instances of the same entity.

Nonidentifying Relationship:

A relationship in which each participating entity has its own indie primary key.

Identifying Relationship:

A relationship in which the parent entitiy's key is also part of the primary key for the child entity.

Nonspecific Relationship:

A relationship where many instances of an entity are associated with many instances of another entity (aka many to many relationship)