What is a reference?

A reference is a connection between two different objects in Assets. Each object in Assets can be connected to many other objects, not directly, but through attributes containing references to other objects.

An Assets object schema can contain an enormous number of total references. This makes Assets a powerful tool that can provide rich context about objects and their inter-relationships.

Because each reference is a link between an object and an attribute on another object, they are divided into two types: outbound references and inbound references. Outbound references point from the current object to another object, while inbound references point from another object towards the current object. The direction of a reference is relative; it will change depending on which object you are examining.

Additionally, each reference can have a ‘Reference type’, which describes the type of relationship between two objects. This could be a ‘Dependency’, ‘Link’, ‘Replaced By’, or any custom value, and provides another dimension of detail that you can use to manage complex networks.