hi,
just a very quick and simple question from a newbie,
when it is said,
"Each membership number is unique throughout all branches of the company"

does that mean that if you are a member of 1 branch you can use that number at different branches? or you have to sign up at every branch you want to be a member of.
i am basically trying to work out if member and branch is a 1 - 1 or a 1 - many relationship.

thanks

Actually, the relationship is neither because the two are independant. Membership numbers identify members, and there is a unique membership number for each member. Branches have no formal relationship to members, so a branch can exist with no members, all members, or anything in between.

The relationship (showing members belonging either to or in branches) is separate from both memeber and branch, and the relationship is not constrained by either member or branch. This makes it a many to many relationship (which SQL represents as a pair of 1 to many relationships).

-PatP

I agree with PatP that the Members and Branches may be independent. From your explanations you cannot know whether a branch can exist without any member or wether a member can be part of more than one branch.

cube, you are talking about the identification of each member that should be unique across all branches of the organization.

Most probably this is not a technical problem, you will need to digg it out and first find what's the relationship between the members and the branches from a business point of view.