Viewing and modifying relationship properties

This topic applies to ArcGIS for Desktop Standard and ArcGIS for Desktop Advanced only.

Note:

Although relationship classes can be both created and edited in ArcGIS for Desktop Advanced and ArcGIS for Desktop Standard, they are read-only in ArcGIS for Desktop Basic. The feature classes participating in a relationship class will also be read-only in ArcGIS for Desktop Basic.

Once you've created the relationship class, it appears in the Catalog tree, and you can inspect its properties as well as relationships for any particular feature class.

You can't modify any of the properties you specified when you created the relationship class except for renaming it. You can set and change relationship rules at your discretion. If you need to change other properties, it is easy to delete the relationship class and re-create it. However, if the relationship has many rules, it can be tedious to reestablish them. One way to make this process easier is to create relationship classes with reusable Unified Modeling Language (UML) model diagrams that can be modified and rerun whenever needed.

ArcCatalog and the Catalog window do not allow you to change the properties of relationship classes or any other geodatabase datasets if any of the geodatabases' contents are being accessed in ArcMap or ArcCatalog. Exit any other instances of ArcMap and ArcCatalog before you make the changes.