A Java SDO Property is contained in a property list associated with a DataObject, where each property in the list has a well defined index. In the ProDataGraph model, a Property corresponds to either a temp-table field (as a column property) or references another DataObject (as a reference property). A column property has a Type that is either a primitive type, such as int, or a commonly used class, such as java.lang.String. A reference property has a Type that refers to the Type of another DataObject. For example, the reference property of a DataObject of data type Customer might refer to one or more DataObject instances of data type Order.

A column property can be single-valued or many-valued. If an ABL temp-table field is defined with an extent option, its corresponding column property is defined as many-valued.

In the ProDataGraph model, a reference property is used to implement a data-relation defined by an associated ProDataRelationMetaData object. When you invoke the ProDataGraph setChildReferences() method, a reference property is added to each DataObject of every parent table that references a child table DataObject. A reference property is defined as many-valued so multiple child DataObject instances of the same type can be referenced in a given child table.