Lakhasly

Okay, so a fan trap happens when one thing is linked to two other things in a one-to-many way, but the apparent link between those outer things isn't really there.It looks like you can go from PurchaseOrder to Supplier to Product, making you think you can figure out which products go with which purchase orders.Basically, it looks like there's a path between them, but it's fake because the diagram shows a relationship that doesn't exist in practice.But this isn't a real path.

Okay, so a fan trap happens when one thing is linked to two other things in a one-to-many way, but the apparent link between those outer things isn't really there. Basically, it looks like there's a path between them, but it's fake because the diagram shows a relationship that doesn't exist in practice.

For example, let's say a Supplier is connected to both PurchaseOrder and Product. It looks like you can go from PurchaseOrder to Supplier to Product, making you think you can figure out which products go with which purchase orders.

But this isn't a real path. There's no direct link between PurchaseOrder and Product in the database. So, the system can't actually tell you which product is in which purchase order, even though the diagram makes it seem like it can.

A fan trap happens because the way the relationships are set up lets them fan out from one entity, making a misleading path between two other entities that don't actually have a relationship in the database.