In multicolumn relationships, the combination of two or more columns in one table form a unique key, and have a relationship with the same combination of columns in another table. For example, if both Table A and Table B have FirstName and LastName columns, you might want to combine the multiple columns into single relationship. (The individual relationships are always found.)

Discovery supports discovery of multicolumn relationships. To configure for this, refer to Table Statistics Displayed for Relationship Discovery. If multicolumn discovery is active, Discovery first indexes and scans for single-column relationships, and then indexes and scans for multicolumn relationships. The corresponding tasks are displayed on the Discovery Tasks panel.

Multicolumn relationships are identified as such in the model Diagram. You can choose to display or not display them. You can also choose whether to combine or separate single-column relationships and multicolumn relationships. See Working with Relationships in the Model Diagram for details.

When a relationship is formed by multiple columns, it is indicated as a multicolumn relationship on the model’s Relationships tab. (See Working with the Relationships Tab.) You can also see which columns are participating in the multicolumn relationship on the Relationship Column Details tab. (See Viewing Relationship Details.)

The multicolumn relationship Discovery feature is controlled with the MultiColumnKey configuration parameters as described in Table Statistics Displayed for Relationship Discovery. You can access these parameters in Studio by choosing Configuration from the Administration menu. By default, multicolumn relationship discovery is turned off.