Join attribute pairs are used to identify linked records. They consist of an attribute in each repository. Both attributes must be in the snapshot table. Multi-language attributes cannot be used as a join attribute.
Parent Repository’s join attribute: The join attribute values in the parent’s repository records must be unique, meaning that no two records in the repository will have the same value in their join attribute. Since each parent record has a different value in their join attribute, the join attribute value uniquely identifies each record.
Child repository’s join attribute: The child repository’s join attribute must be dedicated – it is only used to identify a child record’s parent record. When a child record is created, the value of the parent record’s join attribute will be stored in the child record’s join attribute. That means that from the child record, you can tell which is the parent record. This creates the link from the child record to the parent record.
For example, you could have a parent repository with an attribute called “ProductID” and a child repository that also has an attribute called “ProductID”. (The attributes used to link records do not need to have the same names, but if they do, it is easier to see at a glance which attributes are being used as the join attributes.) When a record in the child repository is linked to a record in the parent repository, the parent record’s ProductID attribute’s value is copied into the child record’s ProductID attribute.
It is possible to define more than one join attribute pair. This may be useful, for instance, if you are using a set of primary keys to uniquely identify the parent record.