Relationships Between Many Forms is Complicated…

[JawnyB]

Newbie here… while I’ve read thru the manual and viewed the videos – lots to compered – I can’t quite figure out how to best set up the relationships between my “Music” forms….

I have 4 interrelated forms…

1st form is for the “artist/musician” – Name, instruments played, birthday, etc…

2nd form is for “bands” – Band Name, artists/musicians, Style, date formed, etc…

3rd form is for “albums” – Album name, “Band” or artist name, date released, etc…

4th form is for “album listening”- Album name, date listened, rating, etc…

I think the relationship between “Artist/Musician” and “Band” forms should be many to many?

Both “Artists/Musicians” and “Bands” can make Albums so one to many?

Each “album” can be “listened” to many times so one to many?

My question is given all the interconnections how do I set this up in each of the forms?

Any help/suggestions would be greatly appreciated…

[Sam Moffatt]

I think the relationship between “Artist/Musician” and “Band” forms should be many to many?

Seems accurate to me, you might want to have a third form to store any metadata like how long a musician was in a particular band but if you only want to track association then I think a link from “Band” to “Artist/Musician” would work fine as a Many to Many (and tick show inverse so that both forms have the table). Using a third form to do the linking is something I cover in my link to form video.

Both “Artists/Musicians” and “Bands” can make Albums so one to many?

This one is fun because a band can make an album but who is in the band at the time of the album? For me this would be a link to form field created in “Bands” and linked to “Albums” as a 1:M with show inverse relationship ticked. My assumption is that an album generally doesn’t have multiple bands (collaborations aside) or at the very least has some notion of a primary band. I’d also then create a link to form M:M from “Artists/Musicians” to the album as well so that you can track who from the band performed on the album (band members change over time, albums have guest artists or collaborations).

This will mean that Albums has links for a “Band” and also “Artists/Musicians”, I think that’s a reasonable model of that.

Each “album” can be “listened” to many times so one to many?

Sounds correct for me :)

[JawnyB]

Thanks @SamMoffit for the information and video link…

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