Parent-Child Apps
Parent-child is a term used to refer to relationships between app instances where one instance is the 'parent' instance and from that parent instance, one or more 'child' instances are created.
A common way to show the relationship between a parent instance and its children is through the use of a Table object. A parent app would contain the Table object and each row in the table would represent a child instance related to this app, visually indicating the one to many relationships of the parent and child instances. The user can then select a row in the table and click a button to launch the child app instance.
Linked Apps
You may want to allow relationships between app instances that are not parent-child relationships, where neither instance could be considered a 'parent'. Using the app instance ID, you can create an association between two separate app instances that are related.
For example, you have an app that manages product defects (when a user submits this app a product defect instance is created). You may want to associate a specific defect with another defect in order to indicate that they are somehow related. In this example, one defect does not "own" the others. They are merely related in some way.
See also: Parent App Example
Return to: Linking Apps and Using Parent-Child Relationships, Designing an App
