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Manage Relationships in Your Compass Entity-Relationship Diagram

You can manually define relationships between fields across different collections in your Compass entity-relationship diagram.

Note

Relationships are for annotation purposes only. Compass does not store relationship information in your MongoDB database.

You can manually add relationships to your entity-relationship diagram by using one of the following methods:

  • Side Panel: Manually add a relationship by selecting a source collection.

  • Drag and Drop: Create a relationship by clicking and dragging from one collection to another.

To add relationships, ensure you have already generated a diagram.

To learn how to add relationships to your entity-relationship diagram, select the tab corresponding to your preferred method:

1

From the Data Modeling tab, open your entity-relationship diagram.

2

Click one of your collection nodes in the diagram. The collections side panel opens on the right side of the screen.

3

In the side panel's Relationship tab, click Add Relationship.

4

Specify values for the following fields under Relationship Properties:

  • Local collection: The primary collection in the relationship.

  • Local field: The field in the primary collection.

  • Local cardinality: The number of unique values in the local field.

  • Foreign collection: The target collection in the relationship.

  • Foreign field: The field in the target collection.

  • Foreign cardinality: The number of unique values in the foreign field.

Compass automatically saves and updates your changes as you make them.

5

In the side panel's Notes tab, you can add annotations for your relationship. This can be helpful for documenting the purpose and details of the relationship.

1

From the Data Modeling tab, open your entity-relationship diagram.

2

In the upper-left corner of the diagram view, click the icon to enable drag-and-drop relationship creation.

3

When you click a collection and drag it to another, Compass opens the side panel and displays the Relationship Properties tab.

4

Specify values for the following fields under Relationship Properties:

  • Local collection: The primary collection in the relationship.

  • Local field: The field in the primary collection.

  • Local cardinality: The number of unique values in the local field.

  • Foreign collection: The target collection in the relationship.

  • Foreign field: The field in the target collection.

  • Foreign cardinality: The number of unique values in the foreign field.

Compass automatically saves and updates your changes as you make them.

5

In the side panel's Notes tab, you can add annotations for your relationship. This can be helpful for documenting the purpose and details of the relationship.

After you create a relationship, Compass displays each relationship in the Relationships tab.

To delete a relationship from your entity-relationship diagram:

1

Click on the relationship in the diagram. The relationship side panel opens on the right side of the screen.

2

In the Relationship Properties tab, click the Delete button.

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