What is the name of the relationship in which a record in the first table can have many associated records in the second table?

It is important to understand and design relationships among tables in a relational database like SQL Server. In a relational database, each table is connected to another table using the Primary-Foreign Key constraints.

Table relationships in SQL Server database are of three types:

  1. One-to-One
  2. One-to-Many
  3. Many-to-Many

One-to-One Relation

In One-to-One relationship, one record of the first table will be linked to zero or one record of another table. For example, each employee in the Employee table will have a corresponding row in EmployeeDetails table that stores the current passport details for that particular employee. So, each employee will have zero or one record in the EmployeeDetails table. This is called zero or one-to-one relationship.

What is the name of the relationship in which a record in the first table can have many associated records in the second table?
One-to-One Relationships

Above, EmployeeID column is the primary key as well as foreign key column in the EmployeeDetails table that linked to EmployeeID of the Employee table. This forms zero or one-to-one relation.

The following query will display data from both the tables.

SELECT * FROM Employee SELECT * FROM EmployeeDetails

The following is the result of the above queries that demonstrate how each employee has none or just one corresponding record in EmployeeDetails table.

What is the name of the relationship in which a record in the first table can have many associated records in the second table?
Records in One-to-One Relationships Tables

One-to-Many Relation

One-to-Many is the most commonly used relationship among tables. A single record from one table can be linked to zero or more rows in another table.

Let's take an example of the Employee and Address table in the HR database. The Employee table stores employee records where EmployeeID is the primary key. The Address table holds the addresses of employees where AddressID is a primary key and EmployeeID is a foreign key. Each employee will have one record in the Employee table. Each employee can have many addresses such as Home address, Office Address, Permanent address, etc.

The Employee and Address tables are linked by the key column EmployeeID. It is a foreign key in the Address table linking to the primary key EmployeeID in the Employee table. Thus, one record of the Employee table can point to multiple records in the Address table. This is a One-to-Many relationship.

What is the name of the relationship in which a record in the first table can have many associated records in the second table?
One-to-Many Relationships

The following query will display data from both the tables.

SELECT * FROM Employee SELECT * FROM Address

The following is the result of the above queries to demonstrate how the data is related in one-to-many relationship.

What is the name of the relationship in which a record in the first table can have many associated records in the second table?
Records in One-to-Many Relationships Tables

In the above data, each record in the Employee table associated with zero or more records in the Address table, e.g. James Bond has zero address, John King has three addresses.

Many-to-Many Relation

Many-to-Many relationship lets you relate each row in one table to many rows in another table and vice versa. As an example, an employee in the Employee table can have many skills from the EmployeeSkill table and also, one skill can be associated with one or more employees.

The following figure demonstrates many-to-many relation between Employee and SkillDescription table using the junction table EmployeeSkill.

What is the name of the relationship in which a record in the first table can have many associated records in the second table?
Many-to-Many Relationships

Every employee in the Employee table can have one or many skills. Similarly, a skill in the SkillDescription table can be linked to many employees. This makes a many-to-many relationship.

In the example above, the EmployeeSkill is the junction table that contains EmployeeID and SkillID foreign key columns to form many-to-many relation between the Employee and SkillDescription table. Individually, the Employee and EmployeeSkill have a one-to-many relation and the SkillDescription and EmployeeSkill tables have one-to-many relation. But, they form many-to-many relation by using a junction table EmployeeSkill.

The following query will display data from all the tables.

SELECT * FROM Employee SELECT * FROM EmployeeSkill SELECT * FROM SkillDescription

The following is the result of the above queries that demonstrate how the data is related in many-to-many relationship.

What is the name of the relationship in which a record in the first table can have many associated records in the second table?
Records in Many-to-Many Relationships Tables

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A relational database collects different types of data sets that use tables, records, and columns. It is used to create a well-defined relationship between database tables so that relational databases can be easily stored. For example of relational databases such as Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle Database, MYSQL, etc.

There are some important parameters of the relational database:

  • It is based on a relational model (Data in tables).
  • Each row in the table with a unique id, key.
  • Columns of the table hold attributes of data.

Employee table (Relation / Table Name)

EmpIDEmpNameEmpAgeCountryName
Emp 101 Andrew Mathew 24 USA
Emp 102 Marcus dugles 27 England
Emp 103 Engidi Nathem 28 France
Emp 104 Jason Quilt 21 Japan
Emp 108 Robert 29 Italy

Following are the different types of relational database tables.

  1. One to One relationship
  2. One to many or many to one relationship
  3. Many to many relationships

One to One Relationship (1:1): It is used to create a relationship between two tables in which a single row of the first table can only be related to one and only one records of a second table. Similarly, the row of a second table can also be related to anyone row of the first table.

Following is the example to show a relational database, as shown below.

What is the name of the relationship in which a record in the first table can have many associated records in the second table?

One to Many Relationship: It is used to create a relationship between two tables. Any single rows of the first table can be related to one or more rows of the second tables, but the rows of second tables can only relate to the only row in the first table. It is also known as a many to one relationship.

Representation of One to Many relational databases:

What is the name of the relationship in which a record in the first table can have many associated records in the second table?

Representation of many to one relational database

What is the name of the relationship in which a record in the first table can have many associated records in the second table?

Many to Many Relationship: It is many to many relationships that create a relationship between two tables. Each record of the first table can relate to any records (or no records) in the second table. Similarly, each record of the second table can also relate to more than one record of the first table. It is also represented an N:N relationship.

For example, there are many people involved in each project, and every person can involve more than one project.

What is the name of the relationship in which a record in the first table can have many associated records in the second table?

Difference between a database and a relational database

Relational DatabaseDatabase
A relational database can store and arrange the data in the tabular form like rows and columns. It is used to store the data as files.
The data normalization feature is available in the relational database. It does not have a normalization.
It supports a distributed database. It does not support the distributed database.
In a relational database, the values are stored as tables that require a primary keys to possess the data in a database. Generally, it stores the data in the hierarchical or navigational form.
It is designed to handle a huge collection of data and multiple users. It is designed to handle the small collection of data files that requires a single user.
A relational database uses integrity constraints rules that are defined in ACID properties. It does not follow any integrity constraints rule nor utilize any security to protect the data from manipulation.
Stored data can be accessed from the relational database because there is a relationship between the tables and their attributes. There is no relationship between data value or tables stored in files.

Advantages of relational databases

  1. Simple Model: The simplest model of the relational database does not require any complex structure or query to process the databases. It has a simple architectural process as compared to a hierarchical database structure. Its simple architecture can be handled with simple SQL queries to access and design the relational database.
  2. Data Accuracy: Relational databases can have multiples tables related to each other through primary and foreign keys. There are fewer chances for duplication of data fields. Therefore the accuracy of data in relational database tables is greater than in any other database system.
  3. Easy to access Data: The data can be easily accessed from the relational database, and it does not follow any pattern or way to access the data. One can access any data from a database table using SQL queries. Each table in the associated database is joined through any relational queries such as join and conditional descriptions to concatenate all tables to get the required data.
  4. Security: It sets a limit that allows specific users to use relational data in RDBMS.
  5. Collaborate: It allows multiple users to access the same database at a time.

Next TopicCandidate Key in DBMS

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What are the 3 types of relationships in a table?

There are three types of table relationships in Access..
A one-to-many relationship. Let's use an order tracking database that includes a Customers table and an Orders table as an example. ... .
A many-to-many relationship. Now let's look at the relationship between a Products table and an Orders table. ... .
A one-to-one relationship..
A one-to-many relationship is defined as when a single record in the first table is related to one or more records in the other table, but a single record in the other table is related to only one record in the first table.

What are the type of relationship between tables?

There are three types of relationships that can exist between two tables: one-to-one. one-to-many. many-to-many.
In a one-to-one relationship, one record in a table is associated with one and only one record in another table. For example, in a school database, each student has only one student ID, and each student ID is assigned to only one person.