In Salesforce data model designing, selecting right relationship from Lookup Vs Master-Detail relationship has always been tricky task for salesforce admins or developers.
Understanding these relationships is crucial for designing an efficient and functional data model in Salesforce. It’s essential to choose right kind of relationship from beginning, Let’s look at simple trick to choose Lookup vs Master-Detail relationship.
Key Difference : Lookup Vs Master-detail relationship
Let’s first see key difference between lookup & master-detail
| Parent-Child Dependency | Parent is optional | Child record is dependent on parent |
| Deletion Behavior | Parent deletion does not affect child | Parent deletion deletes child |
| Ownership & Sharing | Child record has independent ownership | Child inherits ownership |
| Relationship Type | One-to-one or one-to-many | Master-detail (many-to-one) |
Ask Yourself Simple 4 Yes-No Questions
Refer to the diagram provided here and, by addressing the four questions outlined, you will be able to determine the most appropriate relationship type for your data model needs either it is Lookup or Master-Detail.
Consideration for Lookup & Master-Detail Relationship
Although you have decided a relationship to build for given objects, It’s crucial to look some consideration for each of these relationships:
Master-Detail :
- Standard Objects in Salesforce can not be in child side for master-detail.
- We can have maximum 2 master-detail relationship per Object.
- for Master-detail Parent and Child will have same ownership and sharing rules.
- You can convert a master-detail to lookup as long as no roll-up summary fields exist on parent side.
Lookup :
- You can have up to 40 lookup relationships per object.
- Since it’s loosely coupled relationship, you have flexibilities of independent ownerships/sharing for parent and child object
- You can convert lookup to a master-detail, but only if the lookup field in all records contains a value.
