Monday, January 29, 2007

Many-to-Many Relationships get a new look in Miami

Consider the Many-to-Many relationship shown in the diagram above. Many "References" can be used in many "Enquiries". The list of which references are used in each enquiry is stored in "RefsUsed". The composite picture below shows a new way of managing these relationships in Miami database applications. The edit screen in the background is for the "Enquiry" table.
The page shown lists the relationship between the "Enquiry" table and the "Reference" table, and the combination information is stored in "RefsUsed". This relationship is displayed by using listboxes. The one on the left is based on "RefsUsed", and the one on the right is the "Reference" table.
Double-clicking on the "RefsUsed" record in the listbox on the left allows the user to edit the relationship details, by means of the foreground form. Is has not been possible to do this kind of multiple-table editing in Miami forms before.

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