In Timbr, relationships substitute complex JOIN statements so SQL queries become significantly shorter and easier to understand. They represent defined connections between two concepts, matched by the properties of each concept, and are declared once in the ontology rather than reconstructed in every query.
Timbr supports the following relationship types:
- One-to-Many: one instance of a concept may be linked to many instances of another concept
- Many-to-Many: many instances of one concept may be linked to many instances of another, formed from a linked table with two foreign keys
- Transitive: chains connections across multiple concept levels, allowing queries to traverse hierarchies without explicitly navigating each intermediate step
