Populating an intermediate attributed relationship class table

In many-to-many relationships, an intermediate table is used to map the primary key values from the origin to foreign key values from the destination. The intermediate table also stores the attributes associated with the relationship. In order to use the intermediate relationship class table to navigate between the origin and destination features the relationships have to be manually added to the table. When a new relationship is created between two objects, a new row is added to the intermediate table.

New relationships can be added to the intermediate table in an ArcMap edit session.

The first step is to select related features in the two participating feature classes or feature class and table. Next open the Attribute dialog, the selected features will appear in the left panel. Click on the plus sign beside one of the selected features to display the label of the relationship class associated with the feature. Right-click on the relationship class label and click on the "Add Selected" option.

When a new relationship is created, a new row is added to the intermediate table. The foreign key fields in the new row are populated with the values from the primary keys in the origin and destination objects. If a relationship between two objects is deleted, the row corresponding to that relationship is also deleted from the relationship table. Once a relationship has been added to the intermediate table any additional attributes can also be populated.