The relationship manager is a tool for manually controlling and manipulating relationship data to correct errors found in automated relationship management or provide more complete relationship information. In particular, it provides a facility for retrieving as well as modifying relationship instance data.
The relationship manager allows you to configure, query, view, and perform operations on relationship runtime data, including roles and their data. You create relationship definitions with the relationship editor. At run time, instances of the relationships are populated with the data that associates information from different applications. This relationship instance data is created when the maps or other WebSphere® ESB components run and need a relationship instance. The relationship service exposes a set of application programming interfaces (API's) to retrieve relationship metadata and to create, retrieve, and manipulate the instance data. The data is stored in the relationship tables that are specified in the relationship definition. The relationship manager provides a graphical user interface to interact with the relationships and relationship instances.
For each relationship instance, the relationship manager can display a hierarchical listing of its roles. Each role in the relationship has instance data, properties, and key attributes. The relationship tree also provides detailed information about each of the roles in the relationship instance, such as the type of entity, its value, and the date it was last modified. A relationship instance ID is automatically generated when the relationship instance is saved in the relationship table. The relationship manager displays this instance ID at the top level of the relationship tree.
For more information on relationships, see the WebSphere Integration Developer Information Center and the topics on the relationship service in the WebSphere ESB Information Center.