topic Building a Relationship Class in ArcGIS Pro Questions

Building a Relationship Class

aam — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 14:43:15 GMT

I am working with Cemetery Data where I have a Feature Class with the lots. Each lot contains information such as ID, Names of deceased and Status for each lot (Available, Owned, Unavailable, etc).

I would like to separate out the Names to a separate table since I am coming across cases where you could have multiple deceased in one lot. Same could be true for the columbarium. I currently have GlobalIDs field in the original Feature Class.

My questions are:

Can I simply create a new table and then append the information from the original feature class?

Can I use the GlobalID as the parent ID in the new table?

Should the parentID be a GUID data type?

Once the relationship is created and the names are input in the new table (new row), will the parent ID need to be copied or will it populate automatically?

Re: Building a Relationship Class

RPGIS — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 14:53:00 GMT

Hi @aam,

So to answer your questions:

Yes, you can append data to the related table using information from the parent table. We have attribute rules that do this automatically for our inspections.
You can use any kind of id but you must make certain that the field data types are the same and the primary key fields in both tables are of similar size. So yes you can use GlobalIDs. Just make sure the related table has a separate globalid field that isn't auto-populated.
Yes - Must be a global id
When you append and you field match accordingly it will match automatically. You do not want the related table to populate automatically because your relationship will not work. The relationship is looking for identical values so if they are different then it will not work.

Re: Building a Relationship Class

aam — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 15:02:07 GMT

Thank you for your reply.

#4. I plan to eventually publish this relationship class (Reference Layer) and use it in an Editing App. This way the cemetery staff can add the names to Cemetery plot whenever the interment is placed. Would this relationship still be valid? Will the ParentID auto populate when the names are entered?

Re: Building a Relationship Class

RPGIS — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 15:39:16 GMT

I am not sure because we use attribute rules to dictate a lot of the editing behavior. It may automatically populate but I cannot be certain of that. In any case you may want to consider using an attribute rule just to be on the safe side.