How do data entities relate to one another in a Mendix application?

Data entities in a Mendix application relate to one another primarily through associations defined in the domain model. The domain model serves as a visual representation of the data structure and relationships, where entities can be connected to represent one-to-one, one-to-many, or many-to-many relationships. These associations allow for the establishment of links between data entities, facilitating the organization and retrieval of related data during application development.

By using associations in the domain model, developers can define how data entities interact, making operations like data querying and manipulation more straightforward and consistent. This model not only simplifies the development process but also helps ensure data integrity across the application by explicitly defining the relationships.

Other options, while they may pertain to data handling in different contexts, do not capture the core mechanism of how data entities are designed to relate within Mendix applications. For example, hierarchical dependencies might indicate relationships in a more general sense, but they do not provide the same clarity or functionality as defined associations. Similarly, foreign key constraints are more relevant to traditional relational database management systems and do not encompass the full scope of Mendix’s approach. Lastly, direct references in microflows pertain to the process of handling data during execution but do not represent the foundational relationships established during the modeling phase.