Searchable relate / relationship class

415
2
04-19-2013 07:39 AM
Status: Open
NicholasBarger
Occasional Contributor III
It seems there is a lack of functionality with the relationship class.  Users are unable to search on the related table in the relationship class.  Having this ability would eliminate the need for end users to join tables every time they add a related feature class.

Views work to correct this issue but they also have their limitations.  They are not always east to create and the results are sometimes not what you expect.
2 Comments
NicholasBarger
A spin off of this would be the ability to make a join in SDE that would allow a user to add a feature class and automatically have the joined table available in ArcMap.  This is very similar to a relationship class but allows the end user to search on the related tables.
RonnieRichards
I agree with the author. Relationship classes are rather pointless since none of the ESRI templates for Flex or Silverlight or even the old WebADF took advantage or exposed them. Reviewing api documentation it appears there are plenty of programming opportunities for them but that is a rather steep learning curve for most users. 

At this point they are the ONLY solution to maintain referential integrity in a geodatabase yet they are not very useful otherwise. Relationship classes are nice for editing workflows but exposing them to applications out-of-the-box into the templates available today or even ArcGIS online seems be lacking.