Hi, I have a basic question about how to create a n-m self reference: I have categories, which have subcategories, etc... I would like to have fields ChildCategories, and PatentCategories,

The database currently has a join table that relates parent categories to child categories.

All I seem to be able to get in the designer are 1-n relationships with the join table. i.e - I could get a collection of the keys to parents or children, but not a collection of the actual parent or child categories.

Anybody have any tips for doing this? I am free to restructure the DB as needed at this point.

Thanks

Is a category able to exist with multiple parents as in a graph or is a tree structure that you are trying to represent. If you are trying to do a graph then I would suggest writting you own code in the user code regions to fill a parent and child collection when the entity is created.

a Category can have multiple parents and children. Presumably, we will have to manually implement the logic to prevent categories from becoming their own parents or categories.

Thanks

An m:n relation with self is not supported, because it's not efficient. You're filtering on the same table, so you can better fetch the related entities using a simple FIeldCompareValue predicte on the FK.