Question on Linking Tables & creating Relationships

[John F.]

When creating Relationships, between Tables, does 'Relationship Type -
Indeterminate' mean that there is an error in my created relationship? Is
there any literature on this subject?

 

[Sylvain Lafontaine]

Not sure but I think that it means that you didn't set up any index on the
fields referenced by the relationship.

For example, if you set up an unique index on the foreign key, Access will
set it up as a 1-1 relationship but if the index is not unique, it will be a
1-N (or 1-Infini) relationship.

--
Sylvain Lafontaine, ing.
MVP - Windows Live Platform
Email: sylvain aei ca (fill the blanks, no spam please)
Independent consultant and remote programming for Access and SQL-Server
(French)

 

[John W. Vinson]

When creating Relationships, between Tables, does 'Relationship Type -
Indeterminate' mean that there is an error in my created relationship? Is
there any literature on this subject?

Yes, there's an error.

A relationship is "indeterminate" if Access can't tell which (if either) side
is the "one" side. You should have a unique Index, such as a Primary Key, on
one of the fields that you're using for the join; if you join a Primary Key
(or unique field) in TableA to a field without a unique index in TableB,
Access will recognize it as a One (A) to Many (B) relationship.

It's occasionally useful (rather rare in practice) to join a Primary Key in A
to a Primary Key in B, giving a one to one relationship.

What you've done is join a nonunique field in A to a nonunique field in B, so
Access can't enforce the relationship at all, or define its directionality;
the reason is that you might have any number of records in A matching up to
any number of records in B, with no way to tell which specific records match.