Synonym for "Many-to-Many" relationship (relational databases)

Question

What's a synonym for a "many-to-many" relationship? I've finished writing an object-relational mapper but I'm still stumped as to what to name the function that adds that relation.

addParent() and addChild() seemed quite logical for the many-to-one/one-to-many and addSuperclass() for one-to-one inheritance, but addManyToMany() would sound quite unintuitive to an object-oriented programmer. addSibling() or addCousin() doesn't really make sense either.

Any suggestions? And before you dismiss this as a non-programming question, please remember that consistent naming schemes and encapsulation are pretty integral to programming :)

Answer 1

CakePHP calls this a 'Has and belongs to many' association

http://book.cakephp.org/view/85/Saving-Related-Model-Data-HABTM

Answer 2

How about addList or addChildern or addParents or addParentsAndChildren?

Answer 3

Perhaps addFriend()? Other options might be addLinked() or addRelated().

Answer 4

in this example http://pastie.org/938704 wouldn't you just create a method called:

AddUserGame(User someUser, Game someGame)

Answer 5

Tricky! there does not seem to be a generic term that fits "RelateXtoY()" is the best I can come up with.

However for any actual "real" data model there is usually an obvious "verb" which can be used. eg for a many to many relationship between say Country and Airline you could have a method AddRouteTo(CountryId,AirlineId) or TravelledToUsing(CountryId,AirlineId).

Answer 6

What about this line of thought:

• connect(X, Y)
• link(X, Y)
• bind(X, Y)

Not only is it hard to find names for this kind of relation for Object Oriented systems, it is also hard to model them too! Objects tend to live in hierarchies...

See if you can find a container for such a relationship - check what method names that library uses.

Answer 7

In relational database terms the general case is called an Inclusion Dependency, ie: A is a subset of B, where A and B are projections on some (not necessarily distinct) relations. A "foreign key" is a special case of inclusion dependency where B is a candidate key.