Complete Relationship Design Review

Expert

Audit and score a FileMaker relationship architecture against a comprehensive checklist covering normalization, naming, performance, security, and maintainability.

What you'll learn

  • How to conduct a systematic relationship graph audit
  • The scoring criteria for relationship design quality
  • How to prioritize remediation items by impact and effort
  • How to document findings and track improvements over time

A relationship design review is a structured audit of a FileMaker solution's data model and graph architecture. It identifies technical debt, performance risks, security gaps, and maintainability problems before they become production incidents. This lesson provides a complete review methodology with specific checks, scoring criteria, and remediation priorities.

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Graph structure audit

Inspect the relationship graph for structural issues: orphaned TOs, TOs with too many connections (hub TOs), buoy-to-buoy connections, and visual organization.

TEXT
// Graph structure checklist:
// [ ] No orphaned TOs (TOs with no relationship lines)
// [ ] No "hub" TOs with more than ~10 direct connections (graph spaghetti indicator)
// [ ] Buoys connect ONLY to their anchor (anchor-buoy compliance)
// [ ] Naming convention applied consistently (Table_Family format)
// [ ] TOs color-coded by family or sector
// [ ] Dead/obsolete TOs removed
// [ ] Cross-sector relationship count is minimal and documented
// [ ] Visual layout is readable -- families arranged in columns, not overlapping

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