The AC UI has a control which prohibits users from adding the product itself to a relationship.

That same control does not exist in the field mapper. To reproduce this, you have to fetch a dataset and pass it into the field mapper. If you want to reproduce this, prepare a csv file for related product, and use it in an integration job with the target being related product. You will observe that a product can be related to itself.

Reported Version

5.2.2408.1619+lts

Steps to Duplicate

You can create one using Opti's standard processors. This job will not function, but it's just an example: https://testequity-sandbox-testequity2.commerce.insitesandbox.com/admin/data/jobdefinitions/1b68ac0d-83c7-47a5-82b0-5ed6b538a8d5

1. You could put a csv file on an sftp site and grab it, passing it into the field mapper
2. you could open a connection to a sql server and do the same
3. you could write sql to query the opti db directly

You've got a variety of ways to achieve this. It boils down to the field mapper post processor which allows customers to add a product to itself as a related product.

This could be a good opportunity for you to become more familiar with the integration processors in your product: https://support.optimizely.com/hc/en-us/articles/4413199770125-Create-and-edit-integration-jobs is a pretty good article.

Try building an integration job and reproducing this. It's probably easiest to do with a WIS and flat file. If you do not have a WIS available, maybe you have a sql server. For reference, this is the integration job in production https://www.testequity.com/admin/data/jobdefinitions/4df04fb3-f4a8-43ab-a459-4ff1a1e450ce although it does use a custom preprocessor. It's using the opti ootb fieldmapper

Actual Result

You can add a product to it's own list of cross sell products.

Expected Result

 Products shouldn't be added to it's own list of cross sell products