Hi. I have pretty good experience with creating databases, and would put myself at the intermediate level. Not a programmer, but use the wizards in Access frequenetly to create what I need.

I have two tables related in my Events Management database: Programs and Attendees, where each Program has many attendees, and each Attendee may have attended more than one Program. The two are linked via a junction table with primary keys being ProgramID and AttendeeID respectively. What I want to do now is introduce a third relationship and I cannot wrap my head around how to do it. There are Attendees at these Programs that give Talks. What do I need to create to link the talks to the particular Program and then to the Attendee who gave to talk? Essentially to create a library of all of the talks that a specific attendee may have given.

Going a little crazy trying to figure this one out! Thanks for your help.

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Answer from Richard Rost:

Good question. You have to decide how you want the Talks to be related to the other two.

You'll definitely need a TalkT table either way. If a Talk is an event that happens at a specific program, then you should just relate it to the ProgramT table.

If a Talk is a packaged event that a particular speaker gives over and over again, then you might want to have it just related to a SpeakerT table and leave it at that.

But, let's say that all three things can be separate events. You've got a ProgramT table, an AttendeeT table, and a TalkT table. You could just make your junction table have all three IDs in it. Then you could pick a specific attendee at a specific program who attended a specific talk.

But… if the talk is something that happens at a specific program, then you've got to add a little more complexity to it.

It's really up to you… but that's the beauty of Access.