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Status Submitted
Created by Guest
Created on Apr 2, 2024

Fix the Party Relationship Transactions

We’ve recently stubbed our toes on an inconsistency in the implementations of addPartyRelationShip()/getPartyRelationship()/updatePartyRelationship().

The CONTACTREL tables, as well as the transactions above, explicitly represent the relationships as directional – i.e. with an explicit ‘from’ and ‘to’. However, the above transactions appear to disregard which party is ‘from’ and which party is ‘to’. I think this is defensible on the get(), since – until you query – you have no notion of the relationships types recorded, and so can’t express the anticipated ‘from’ and ‘to’.

However, this is problematic for add() and update(). Say we take a social media example. I could record:

“Ron follows Jim on Instagram”/”Jim is followed by Ron on Instagram”

The reltype is “Follows on Instagram”. From = Ron, To = Jim.

Suppose Jim sees me following him. He checks out my Instagram and decides to follow me back.

If I try to call addPartyRelationship( From = Jim, To = Ron, Type = “Follows on Instagram”) MDM considers this a duplicate and fails the transaction. However, it’s not a duplicate. The direction is the reverse of the existing relationship

We recently encountered this on-boarding a new client profile data source, where among the notions represented are (partial) ownership relationships between companies – for example A owns a 15% stake in B, and B owns a 25% stake in A. MDM does not permit recording both relationships

Needed By Quarter