Creating associations for your data

In Chapter 6, Understanding Domain Model Basics, we briefly discussed the different types of associations between entities. In this section, we will dive a little deeper into that subject and discuss each of the different types of associations, as well as know when to apply each one.

The first thing to know about setting up your domain models is that each project is going to be different. Of course, the principles remain the same, but the data you will be working with will differ from project to project. It's important to have a firm understanding of what's possible and what's preferred when starting to define your application's data layer. At the heart of all your data in a Mendix project is your entities and the associations between those entities. No architect and no domain model are perfect, it's just not possible, but the closer you are to getting your data structure correct the first time around, the easier it will...