D365 CRM Entity Relationships

How can you predict the behavior of the effect of record deletion on its related records?

If you are aware of the "Type of behavior" of the relationship between two entities in Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM then you can understand it as follows easily.

Primarily there are two types of relationships - one is Referential and another is Parental. Let's talk about each of these relationships one by one.

If the relationship is Referential and Remove Link on Delete: then any actions taken on one will not affect the other.

If it is Referential and Restrict Delete: then any action taken on the parent record will not be applied to the child record, but the parent record cannot be deleted while the child record exists.

Next is the Parental relationship, which establishes a very tight link between records.

If it is Parental: then any action taken on a record of the parent table is also taken on the related child table records.

If it is Custom: then Custom behavior for each possible action is applicable. For Custom behavior, setting up detailed cascading options for Delete, Share, Reparent, Assign, and Unshare can be possible.

However, the "Type of behavior" option is not applicable for many-to-many relationships, where any actions taken on one will not affect the other.