What is a Relationship !?

I feel like most of the papers I have read about E-R seem to be avoiding really dealing with the questions in particular relationships what to they mean a relationship is the association of entities ???

Is a relationship the fact that they are related e.g. book on a shelf meaning that the place of a book is on the shelf i.e. something that he is like the height of a man ???

Or is a relationship something by itself that is the relationship e.g. component in recipe meaning a physical something that is the same as the component and is in the recipe ???

Please help ! the words are starting to lose their meanings. Received on Wed Nov 19 2003 - 23:32:00 CET