The CONNECTS keyword is used to define 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. Once a set of CONNECTS clauses has been specified, only those connections will be 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)
}
where:
[...] denotes an optional construct.
<...> denotes a type designation usually written as "Type Name".
AND_SUBTYPES
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 are processed to create a list of allowed connections.
When used within 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 then a different keyword structure can be used to add them. For a definition of the new structure, see REPRESENTS EXPLICIT RELATIONSHIP.