CHAPTER 4
Understanding Table Relationships
We've already covered one of the most basic assumptions about relational database systems—that data is spread across a number of tables that are related through primary and foreign keys. Although this basic principle is easy to understand, it can be much more difficult to understand why and when data should be broken into separate tables.
Because the data managed by a relational database such as Access exists in a number of different tables, there must be some way to connect the data. The more efficiently the database performs these connections, the better and more flexible the database application as a whole will function.
Although databases are meant to model real‐world situations, or at least manage the data involved in real‐...