Define a one-to-one relationship between two schemas using the Schema Editor relationship-ui

The ability to understand the relationships between your customers and their interactions with your brand across various channels is an important part of Adobe Experience Platform. Defining these relationships within the structure of your Experience Data Model (XDM) schemas allows you to gain complex insights into your customer data.

While schema relationships can be inferred through the use of the union schema and Real-Time Customer Profile, this only applies to schemas that share the same class. To establish a relationship between two schemas belonging to different classes, a dedicated relationship field must be added to a source schema, which references the identity of the other related schema.

This document provides a tutorial for defining a relationship between two schemas using the Schema Editor in the Experience Platform user interface. For steps on defining schema relationships using the API, see the tutorial on defining a relationship using the Schema Registry API.

Getting started

This tutorial requires a working understanding of XDM System and the Schema Editor in the Experience Platform UI. Before beginning this tutorial, please review the following documentation:

Define a source and reference schema

It is expected that you have already created the two schemas that will be defined in the relationship. For demonstration purposes, this tutorial creates a relationship between members of an organization’s loyalty program (defined in a “Loyalty Members” schema) and their favorite hotel (defined in a “Hotels” schema).

Schema relationships are represented by a dedicated field within a source schema that points to another field within a reference schema. In the steps that follow, “Loyalty Members” will be the source schema, while “Hotels” will act as the reference schema.

The following sections describe the structure of each schema used in this tutorial before a relationship has been defined.

Loyalty Members schema

The source schema “Loyalty Members” is based on the XDM Individual Profile class, containing field that describe members of a loyalty program. One of these fields, personalEmail.addess, serves as the primary identity for the schema under the Email namespace. As seen under Schema Properties, this schema has been enabled for use in Real-Time Customer Profile.

Hotels schema

The reference schema “Hotels” is based on a custom “Hotels” class, and contains fields that describe a hotel. In order to participate in a relationship, the reference schema must also have a primary identity defined and be enabled for Profile. In this case, _tenantId.hotelIdacts as the primary identity for the schema, using a custom “Hotel ID” identity namespace.

Create a relationship field group

In order to define a relationship between two schemas, the source schema must have a dedicated field that will indicate the reference schema’s primary identity. You can add this field to the source schema by creating a new schema field group or extending an existing one.

In the case of the Loyalty Members schema, a new preferredHotel field will be added to indicate the loyalty member’s preferred hotel for company visits. Start by selecting the plus icon (+) next to the source schema’s name.

A new field placeholder appears in the canvas. Under Field properties, provide a field name and display name for the field, and set its type to “String”. Under Assign to, select an existing field group to extend, or type in a unique name to create a new field group. In this case, a new “Preferred Hotel” field group is created.

When finished, select Apply.

The updated preferredHotel field appears in the canvas, located under a _tenantId object since it is a custom field. Select Save to finalize your changes to the schema.

Define a relationship field for the source schema relationship-field

Once your source schema has a dedicated reference field defined, you can designate it as a relationship field.

Select the preferredHotel field in the canvas, then scroll down under Field properties until the Relationship checkbox appears. Select the checkbox to reveal the required parameters for configuring a relationship field.

Select the dropdown for Reference schema and select the reference schema for the relationship (“Hotels” in this example). Under Reference identity namespace, select the namespace of the reference schema’s identity field (in this case, “Hotel ID”). Select Apply when finished.

The preferredHotel field is now highlighted as a relationship in the canvas, displaying the name of the reference schema. Select Save to save your changes and complete the workflow.

Next steps

By following this tutorial, you have successfully created a one-to-one relationship between two schemas using the Schema Editor. For steps on how to define relationships using the API, see the tutorial on defining a relationship using the Schema Registry API.