Understanding reference relationships

Choosing the right revision methodology is vital to managing reference relationships. There are two basic options for controlling reference relationships:

• Use document workflow: Parent documents always reference the last released revision of child documents.
• Use derived documents: Parent documents reference the child document revision that was released when the parent was last released.

The following sections discuss each of these options and their ramifications on reference relationships. Regardless of the option used, the document history displayed in the Show Revisions dialog will be maintained as expected.

Note    When work areas are used, documents in the work area will resolve references only within the current work area and to the Main area. References will not resolve from one work area to another. Documents in the Main area will resolve only within the Main area.

Note When project copies are used, the last released master documents will continue to resolve to the other masters until the project copies are released as new master revisions. When the project copies are released, the master documents will resolve based on the revision methodology used to modify the project copy.