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Understanding Table Relationships

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Posted on by Lukewarm

I have two existing tables and I want to build a view. From what I understand, I have to build a relationship between the two tables before I can create a view that uses both tables. When I create a relationship, the interface does not ask me which fields I want to be part of the relationship. This does not make sense to me. I am an old SQL guy and this does not make sense.

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Microsoft Dataverse with Power Apps

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a33ik 3,306 Most Valuable Professional on at

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What kind of relationship are you trying to add? Is it safe to assume it's N-N? In this case, fields would be assigned by PK fields of both entities.

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Lukewarm 49 on at

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one to many.

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a33ik 3,306 Most Valuable Professional on at

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When you create a relationship UI asks you to provide a related table and the column in the related table.

You can check the following post - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/relationships-types-behaviors-dataverse-kumar-manish-csm-pmp-/

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Fubar 8,352 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Unlike SQL, Dataverse manages the PK and FK.
The PK is a system generated GUID that is held in a column with the same logical schema name as the Table but with a suffix of "id" e.g. for a table with schema "new_mytable" the PK will be in "new_mytableid" (You can extend this by creating Alternate Keys)

The FK is a little bit more difficult conceptually - the FK is always a GUID and the only way you can create a field of that type GUID is to create a field of type Lookup (and doing so will automatically create a FK).
If you create a Lookup Field - this is automatically creating a Relationship and creating an FK (the table with the Lookup field is the Child table)
If you manually create a Relationship you will be prompted for the 2 tables, and for the child table it will prefill values for the Lookup (but you can change them if you desire) and it will create the Lookup on the Child.
As the FK is always a Lookup field (and a Lookup field is already an FK) you cannot select an existing field.

Also, whilst the FK linkage is the the GUID, the Lookup on the Child will display the Primary Name Column value from the parent.

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