Adjective Phrasings in Relationships

When a relationship between entities is expressed with an adjective, use adjective phrasing to define the relationship. The adjective can be:

• A single word not represented by a field.
  
  
• Part of a database object that represents an entity.
  
  
• A measurement.

When specifying the adjective phrasing that describes the relationship between the subject and the adjectives or entities that contain adjectives, you are providing information to answer questions such as:

• "Which people are old?"
  
  
• "Which people are young?"

Adjective phrasing also provides the information needed to answer trait-like questions for measurement and entity adjectives only:

• "What is John Smith's age," as well as "What is the age of John Smith?"

In addition, specifying a measurement adjective phrasing allows questions that use the comparative or superlative forms:

• "Is John older than Mary?" (comparative)
  
  
• "Who is the youngest employee?" (superlative)

See Also

Defining Relationship Phrasings

Expanding an English Query Model