Reference attributes point to an attribute in another entity which may be in the same or a different catalog. The value displayed is that of the referenced attribute using the display component appropriate for its type. Editing is slightly more complicated as there are two possible ways of editing: selecting the attribute to reference and editing its value in its catalog. It is usual for the catalog, type of entity and target attribute to be preselected in a default value so that the most usual editing operation is simply to select the entity to be referenced.
Since it is quite common to want to reference the name of a target entity rather than a specific attribute, an entity's name can be treated as an attribute called JEANname.