Relational dbase Newbie

  • Thread starter Thread starter Aardvark
  • Start date Start date
A

Aardvark

Dear all,
I thought the point of establishing relationships was to link tables. Yet
when I when I put a customer ID into table 1, the same customer ID does not
appear in table 2?
What I want to do is link my client list to an invoice list in a one to many
relationship. I think this must be easy but think I may have also
misunderstood the nature of dbase relationships.

HELP!

Thanks,
D
 
D,

Yes, I think you have misunderstood Relationships. I presume you are
referring to defining Relationships within the Relationships window.
These relationships don't actually *do* anything. The main point of
setting them up is so you can enforce Referential Integrity, and the
main point of Referential Integrity is to prevent a record being entered
on the "many" side of a one-to-many relationship if a matching record
does not exist on the "one" side. But Access doesn't do data entry for
you. You have to do that yourself. You should do so using Forms, these
are the database objects provided and designed for this purpose. Tables
are for background storage, and should generally not be seen in the
course of normal database usage. And if you are using forms, it is
possible to simplify the data entry process by the use of subforms. For
example, you could have a form based on your Client List, and a form in
continuous view based on your Invoice List, and this second form placed
on the Client form as a subform. If the Link Master Fields and Link
Child Fields properties of the subform are set to reflect the
relationship between the main form data and the subform data (probably
based on a field called ClientID or some such), then entering an invoice
record into the subform will automatically record this as an invoice for
the current Client.
 
I have the same problem. Did you solve it? Any help
would be appreciated.

Thanks
Betty
Click to expand...

This is NOT HOW RELATIONSHIPS WORK.

CustomerID's will *not* automagically appear in Table2. You should
only create a record in Table2 when there is data to be put into that
table. The simplest way to keep them linked is to use a Form based on
Table1, with a Subform based on Table2; use the CustomerID as the
master/child link field. When you enter data into the subform, Access
will fill in the link for you.
 
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