> My question is: must I manually enter the value from the "people_id" > (primary key of "people table") into the machine_id field of the > "machines table"? My only question here (unless you see others ;) is > must I manually enter these "corresponding" numbers?
If I understand your question correctly, you're asking if users need to remember the id that corresponds to the person to whom they are assigning a machine. Well, that depends on how your data is entered. Obviously, the correct data must be entered if you'd like things to work, but the degree of difficulty involved in that depends on how you interact with your database. I think it's fair to say that most end-users don't work with data by typing out SQL statements. Data is usually entered and retrieved via a front end of sorts, often through forms on a website or within an application. In the case of your people/machines example, a script can be written to display the names of people based on their id. When a user selects one of these names and goes to insert data into the machines table, similar scripting ensures that the proper id is used. Again, sorry if it's a bad explanation. Edward Dudlik Becoming Digital www.becomingdigital.com ----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "MySQL List" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, 30 May, 2003 00:28 Subject: establishing relationship Someone here (Mike) has been quite kind and responded elaborately to me off-list, thanks Mike! I wanted to go ahead and put this "final" question here: In my database that I'm working on I already have data --a 'one to many' people to machines db. I had made each table with a primary key field (people_id, machine_id), each autoincrementing. Now I see that the machines table needs no primary key. (?) In fact, it should have the same field but it cannot be a primary as one person can have many machines. My question is: must I manually enter the value from the "people_id" (primary key of "people table") into the machine_id field of the "machines table"? My only question here (unless you see others ;) is must I manually enter these "corresponding" numbers? ----------- If you started to design "without data" so to speak, you would instruct whomever that they need to enter the proper "persons_id" VALUE into the corresponding machine_id, right? Sorry to be redundant! ----------- So aside from having a wonderful RDBMS --there must always be someone entering any and all new data AND they must know how to keep those IDs... right? Thanks, Ted -- MySQL General Mailing List For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql To unsubscribe: http://lists.mysql.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- MySQL General Mailing List For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql To unsubscribe: http://lists.mysql.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
