a method , system , program product , and data structure for utilizing the schema of a hierarchy to represent a reference association between nodes , to allow a reference association to hold properties , and for reference associations to be used in the coalescing of properties . in one embodiment , a first child node is added to the hierarchy node that holds the reference association . from a second child node , the location of the reference association is determined whose presence is indicated by a delimiter . the reference association node contains properties to be associated with the second child node . the reference association node is located to obtain properties to be coalesced with the properties of the second child node .