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Old May 13th, 2004, 04:54 PM
Tom
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Default Multiple Many-To-Many Tables

TC:

Thanks for the info.

Not sure if I entirely understand your schema.


I got the 3 tables:
tblPersonClub is the junction which has 2 Fields (Long Integer) that are
linked to the primary keys of the other 2 tables: tblPerson & tblClub

So here are my questions:
1. What did you mean by "composite"?
2. What is the "DateRange". I assume it's a field, right?
3. ClubID is the primary but DateFrom = "key"... not sure what you mean by
that?
4. Also, I thought I would end up with 6 tables. 2 pairs of 2 tables
linked via their junction tables. And then link the 2 junction tables to
one another... I'm probably wrong about this, right?


Thanks for any additional info,
Tom




"TC" wrote in message
...

"Tom" wrote in message
...
Hello,

I am familiar with using a junction table for a "many-to-many"

relationship.

However, I'm not exactly sure how I could string multiple "many-to-many"

or
junction tables into an architecture.

Does anyone have a suggestion?


Here are two examples.

1. If A is many-to-many (m:m) with B, you need a junction table AB (or
whatever) - as you know. Similarly, if some other table C is m:m to D, you
need another junction table CD. Ditto for as many other tables & junction
pairs that are required.

2. Say you have Person, Club, and PersonClub. (The latter is the junction
table to allow a person to belong to many clubs, and a club to have many
persons.) Say you need to record each consecutive period that a person was

a
member of each club. (Eg. 1990-1993, 1998-2001 etc). In this case, for

each
one entry in the PersonClub table, there are many entries in a table of
date-ranges:

tblPersonClub
PersonID ( composite )
ClubID ( primary key )

DateRange
PersonID ( composite )
ClubID ( primary )
DateFrom ( key )
DateTo

In the latter example:

- Person : Club is m:m ) the normal
- Person : PersonClub is 1:m ) junction table
- Club : PersonClub is 1:m ) structure

- PersonClub : DateRange is 1:m

Do those help?


For instance, I may have members that are assigned to many projects (and
each project many members). But I also have boards that have multiple
priorities and multiple priorities are linked to multiple organizations.

Currently, I'm myself trying to figure out the relationships between all

the
entities. Again, knowing how I could use (with a generic example)

multiple
junction tables would be great advice.

Thanks,
Tom