Richard, can you please tell me why you do not like global relationships?

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Reply from Richard Rost:

It depends on the database, and the situation. Most of the time, I don't set up global relationships. The only exception is if I want to enforce referential integrity. You can read more about why here.

In a nutshell, if you name your fields properly and consistently, then Access will automatically make the correct relationships in your queries most of the time. Cascade UPDATES are unnecessary and should never happen if you use AutoNumbers for your primary key fields (which you should).

Cascade DELETES are the only major benefits that I can see by using global relationships - and I'm VERY careful to use these (delete a customer and all of his orders disappear from your system). I prefer to handle this myself with a delete query and SEVERAL "are you sure?" prompts.

So, it really depends on your needs, your database, and your situation. You can build a great database without ever setting up global relationships. Sure, they can sometimes make a nice "road map" for your database, but I find them largely unnecessary.