You dont HAVE to relate them. It still works.
Now, if you want to use them, it would be mainly to keep parent records from getting deleted an leaving all 'orphan' child records still in the table. (handy)
I rarely use them since none of my records get deleted. (plus sometimes its a pain to change design with relations on)
But its good either way.
Shouldn't there be lines connecting the different related fields?
Establishing relationships is not critical to a functioning database. If they are established, then when you build queries Access will apply the established links. You might appreciate that or might find it annoying when you want the link to be the other way.
Also, establishing links allows you to set Enforce Referential Integrity and the associated Cascade Delete and Cascade Update.
Many experienced developers choose not to set relationships for reasons expressed but ranman and instead control integrity with code and preventing user interaction directly with tables and queries.
How to attach file: http://www.accessforums.net/showthread.php?t=70301 To provide db: copy, remove confidential data, run compact & repair, zip w/Windows Compression.
When you say it will "apply the established links" do you mean that it will organize the data the based off of the links? How exactly does that work? I am trying to merge these databases. Each database has lots of the same fields but some that are unique to that specific database. In the master database where I am merging the data I am going to add about 2 of those unique fields from each database. There are a lot of common contacts between the databases so I do not want to just pile all of the records on tip of one another if I can combine them based on those common fields.
Thank you.
I mean when you pull the tables into query builder the link lines will be set by Access based on the relationships. Will not 'organize' the data, just joins records. Then you pull the desired fields down to grid.
However, I think in other thread you indicated you need to UNION the tables, not JOIN, therefore PK/FK linking is irrelevant and relationships serve no purpose.
How to attach file: http://www.accessforums.net/showthread.php?t=70301 To provide db: copy, remove confidential data, run compact & repair, zip w/Windows Compression.