Difficult cross-tab query

Question

Tied myself a bit up in knots in the development of a relatively complicated relational database.

Purpose of database is to allow managers to arrange meetings with representatives (or groups of representatives) from particular companies.

Naturally the table, outlining the details relating to arranged meetings, is of utmost importance. Unfortunately most of its information is nigh impossible for users to parse as the fields are merely returning the numerical fields of other tables.

So really what I need, to be able to create a query that will gather all this diverse information together, tied to the meeting key, and allow users to enter in all the relevant information in a form for... well arranging such appointments.

Here's the schematic (some irrelevant info is hidden)

(is it my imagination or is the png unusually small?)

I was thinking of producing a very long series of SELECTS and INNER JOINS. Something like

SELECT Meeting.MID, Meeting.Date_dd/mm/yyyy, Meeting.Location, Contact.Cname, Contingent.Manager [...]
FROM Meeting INNER JOIN (ContactMeeting INNER JOIN (Contact INNER JOIN [...]

But I am concerned because the relations are not linear; ContactMeeting branches off to Contact, Group_contact, and Contingent; that INNER JOINS in this instance may not work. ContactMeetings may have either a Contact, a Group_contact, or both present (inclusive or), but will always have a Contingent present (which will consist of one or more managers).

Help in relation to this would be much appreciated!

Answer 1

For prettier subforms, you can set some form properties for the form to be contained by the subform control. You need to open the (sub) form in design view.