Chapter 18
Setting Up Related Lists
Relational data structures are a feature that SharePoint users have requested for years, but have not yet been fully implemented. A simpler solution known as related lists does however exist, where the items in one list provide the detail for items in another list, with the two lists related to one another by a field such as an ID or other column. SharePoint 2010 adds some features to make modeling list relationships easier and provides some new functionality for maintaining the lists.
Using related lists makes it easy to create sophisticated views with a master-detail type of presentation. For example, one list may contain sales orders, while another list may contain detail about the customer that made the purchase. Related lists enable you to create a view showing the orders from one list, combined with the customer's address from the other list.
The main element used to create related lists is the lookup column. You need at least two lists, though it is possible to create relationships that span multiple lists. Each list provides detail for and refers back to a column in the list above it. In this chapter you will learn how to connect two lists.
A lookup column enables you to draw values from other lists on the same SharePoint site and use their values in the current list. Using a lookup list and a column from the parent list, you can create a relationship to the child list, also known as the detail list.
In this lesson we are going to examine ...
