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sqltableau-apidata-modelingbusiness-intelligence
beyondtdr
beyondtdr

Reputation: 451

What is the problem with many-to-many relationships?

I feel like I have searched through the internet to find an answer to this question for quite some time now, but without success. Does anyone feel comfortable explaining why many-to-many relationships should be replaced with a bridge table?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 980

Answers (1)

Übend
Übend

Reputation: 71

Probably most (all??) RDMS implement a M:N relationship by creating a table containing two columns with the FKs. So there is no advantage to explicitely model the bridge table.

But in most realistic cases you want to store additional information (besides the fact of its existence) about the relationship instance, e.g. timestamp and user from the creation. That means that you need to model the bridge table anyway.

Upvotes: 2

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