The CONNECTS keyword defines a precise connection restriction to be supported by an Explicit relationship definition. The definition has a property referencing a source item and another property referencing a destination or target item, but the two together can define more connection paths than are intended when using heterogeneous properties and/or subtyping. After a set of CONNECTS clauses has been specified, only those connections are supported when drawing the line and when updating the relationship definition.
Example
DEFINITION definition_type_name { CONNECTS source_type [AND_SUBTYPES1] TO target type [AND_SUBTYPES2] [CONNECTS ... ] }
(As many CONNECTS statements as required can be specified)
AND_SUBTYPES
Notes
1
indicates that subtypes of the source type should be included as source options for this restriction.
2
indicates that subtypes of the target type should be included as target options for this restriction.
All combinations of the indicated sources and targets, for all definitions represented by an explicit relationship line symbol type, are processed to create a list of allowed connections. It is therefore possible to record conflicting sets of connections if the same line supports multiple types. If a user draws one that the definition will not support as a result of these restrictions then the references are not saved and the line will be removed the next time the refresh for representational consistency is run.
When used in a DEFINITION block, this is supporting a SINGLE relationship through the definition type. If users need to support more than one relationship through a definition type, a different keyword structure can be used to add them. For a definition of the new structure, see REPRESENTS EXPLICIT RELATIONSHIP.