Do all the tables in an Access databae have to be linked?

[Guest]

Access 2003: Can there be unlinked tables? im under the impression that all
tables must be linked togethere somehow.

 

[Dirk Goldgar]

Access 2003: Can there be unlinked tables? im under the impression
that all tables must be linked togethere somehow.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "linked together", but a database
can contain some linked tables and some local (that is, unlinked)
tables.

 

[Guest]

linked together meaning they share a relationship.
Say you have 6 tables total and 5 are linked together and then there is one
sitting all by itself with no relationship to any of the other 5 tables.
Is this possible?

 

[Mick Ruthven]

Sure that's possible. You "link" tables into relationships if they have such
relationships, and not if they don't. It depends entirely on the data.

 

[Dirk Goldgar]

linked together meaning they share a relationship.
Say you have 6 tables total and 5 are linked together and then there
is one sitting all by itself with no relationship to any of the other
5 tables. Is this possible?

Oh, I see what you mean now. No, not all tables need to have
relationships with other tables. It depends on what those tables
represent. Probably it's most common for every table to be related to
at least one other table, just because that's what people do with
databases: model real-world entities and their relationships to other
entitites. Relational databases become more flexible and more powerful,
the more their tables and relationships represent the deep structure of
that part of the real world they are modelling -- and if you analyze
them thoroughly enough, most things in the real world are related to
other things. But if you ignore those entities and relationships that
aren't of interest to you, you can have a database table that has no
*defined and represented* relationship to any other table.

 

[Guest]

Creating a relationship creates an index on each side
of the relationship, if one does not already exist.

The relationship is not required, but for a lot of ordinary
tasks the indexes are.

To get an updateable query from joined tables, you need
indexes. Creating a relationship is one common way of
creating these indexes.

Of course if the data is totally unrelated, then you will never
use both tables in one query.

But if the data is totally unrelated, you could consider putting
it in a different file. Why have it in the same MDB?

(david)