How to Implement Relationships While Designing Tables in SQL?

In database design, understanding and implementing relationships between entities is crucial. These relationships, such as one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many, establish connections between tables using key constraints.

Let’s explore each type of relationship with examples and SQL implementation.

One-to-One Relationship

In this relationship, each row/record of the Let’s table is exactly related to one row in the second table and vice versa.

Example: Let’s consider 2 tables “Student” and “Class_Details“. Now “Student” has 2 columns – “Enrolment_No“, “Name” and “Class_Details” has 4 columns “Roll_No“, “Class“, “Division“, and “Enrolment_No“.

In the example, you can see that a student will have only one enrolment number allotted, only one roll number, and only one class and division. Then it may change year-wise or semester-wise but a student cannot have multiple classes or enrollment numbers or roll numbers simultaneously. Here, a one-to-one relationship occurs. Let’s understand One-to-One relationships with the help of a table diagram and their output.

Create tables “Student” and “Class_Details” with required columns or attributes as mentioned in the above example.

One-to-one relationship between student and class_details

Here, you can see that each student’s table record is exactly related to one record in the class_details table. Each student has a unique Enrolment number and Roll number. It is not possible for a student to be enrolled in 2 classes or divisions at same time. Each student is related from its name details and its class uniquely.

SQL Query

Now, to retrieve data from the tables we write the following query to view the details of both the tables.

SELECT students.Enrolment_No, students.Name, students.Roll_No, class_details.Class, class_details.Division
FROM students
JOIN class_details ON students.Enrolment_No = class_details.Enrolment_No;

Query for retrieving records from both the table

The above query retrieves records using the primary key and foreign key of another table which is in turn a primary key of the first table. The above query uses ‘Enrolment_No‘ for referencing the records from both tables. In this query, we retrieved data using the primary key of the Student table and as a foreign key of the class_details table.

Output:

Output of above query of students to class_details table

Explanation: Through the above output or result we can see that each record of the first table is related exactly to one another record in the next table. You can also notice that in one-to-one relationship output, no multiple records are possible.

one-to-one relationship(vice-versa)

In the definition, we saw that the one-to-one relationship is also vice-versa, this means the class_details table is also related to exactly one record in students table.

One-to-one relation from class_details to students entity representing vice-versa condition

Let’s see the query for a one-to-one relationship from the class_details table to the student’s table.

SELECT class_details.Roll_No, class_details.Class, class_details.Division, students.Enrolment_No, students.Name
FROM class_details
JOIN students ON class_details.Roll_No = students.Roll_No;

The query for vice-versa condition i.e. one-to-one relationship from class_details to students

As you can see, in the above query, we used the class_details table primarily to retrieve the data using presenting one-to-one relation.

Output:

Output for the above query

Explanation: You can see that we have the same number of records that we got in the output from the students table to the class_details table i.e. 5 and it is the same number of records while retrieving from class_details to the students table. You can also see that each record is associated with only one record in another table. We got 5 records from both way of retrieving the data using one-to-one relation from table students and class_details and vice-versa.

One-to-Many Relationship

In this relationship, each row/record of the Let’sfirst table can be related to multiple rows in the second table.

Example:

Let’s consider 2 tables “Parent” and “Child“. Now the “Parent” table has columns “ParentID“, “Name“… and so on, and “Child” has columns or attributes “ChildID“, “Name“, “Age“, “ParentID” and so on.

In the above example we used the logic of parent and child and you can see that a parent can have many children, but a child cannot have many/multiple parents.

Create tables ‘parent‘ and ‘child‘ as mentioned in the above table and let’s see one-to-many relation between these 2 tables.

one-to-many relationship between parent and child table

We can see that each record from the table parent is associated with one or more than one record(s) in the child table representing one-to-many relationships. Here, a one-to-many relationship occurs when the vice-versa of the above condition should not be true. If the vice-versa or reverse condition for a one-to-many relationship becomes true then it is a many-to-many relationship.

SQL Query:

Let’s see the query to retrieve data representing one-to-many relationshipsparent-to-child:

SELECT parent.parentID, parent.Name, parent.age, parent.Address, child.ChildID, child.Name, child.age
FROM parent
JOIN child ON parent.parentID = child.ParentID

Query for retrieving data from parent and child table

The above query retrieves all possible records from parent-to-child relationship entities.

Output for the above query representing one-to-many relationships

Explanation: In the output of the above query, you can see that the parent’s name is occurring more than one time with different child names representing a parent associated with one or more than one child. For example, we can see that HarishKumar Verma has two children, Jiya Verma, and Vihaan Verma, Vishvaas Modi has 3 children i.e. Vrisha Modi, Mihir Modi, and Farah Modi, and last Vidhit Chopra has only a single child i.e. Nickie Chopra representing one record/row associated with one or more than one child.

Each record from the child table is associated with only one record in the parent table and it also fits the logic that a parent may have one or more than one child but a child cannot have multiple parents. Similarly, you can also design the relation as per the business logic which fits into which relationship better.

Many-to-Many Relationship

In this relationship, multiple rowsthe /record of first table can be related to multiple rows in the second table and vice versa.

Example: Consider tables “Facultythe ” and “Department“. Now the “Faculty” table has columns “FacultyID“, “Faculty_Name“, “Course” and so on, and “Department” has columns “DepartmentID“, “Department_Name” and so on.

Now, each faculty member can be associated with multiple departments, and each department can be associated with multiple faculty members establishing many-to-many relationships.

Create Table:

Example of many-to-many relationships from faculty to department entities:

Example of many-to-many relationships from faculty to department entities

Example of many-to-many relationship from department to faculty entities:

Example of many-to-many relationship from department to faculty entities

Now, in above example as per the business logic, you can see that faculty works in more than one department and vice-versa is also true that departments have multiple faculties working with them.

Now if we see technically then, records in the faculty table are associated with more than one record in the department table, and records from department table are associated with more than one faculties or records in the faculty entity.

SQL Query:

Now let’s see the query for retrieving data using record association from faculty to department entity referencing using FacultyID as the primary key.

SELECT faculty.FacultyID, faculty.Faculty_Name, faculty.Course, department.DepartmentID, department.Department_Name, department.Department_Grading
FROM faculty
JOIN department ON faculty.FacultyID = department.FacultyID

faculty to department table

This query works like, the FacultyID matched or present in records of the department table will get associated with it. Let’s understand by looking at the output

Output:

Output of above query from faculty to department table

Explanation: FacultyID present in the department table will be associated with those records in department which have the FacultyID as the same in the faculty table. For example, FacultyID 61801, 61802, 61803 are associated with Departments so the FacultyID is repeating for representing multiple departments

Now let’s see the query from record association from the department table to the faculty table to represent the many-to-many relationship.

SQL Query:

SELECT department.departmentID, department.Department_Name, department.Department_Grading, faculty.FacultyID, faculty.Faculty_Name AS facultyName, faculty.Course
FROM department
JOIN faculty ON department.DepartmentID = faculty.DepartmentID;

Retrieving records/data using departmentID as a reference from department to faculty table

Output:

This is the output of the above query

Explanation: Now, in the above example you can see that the department name, and grading is repeating multiple times to represent multiple faculties.

Conclusion

We learned types of relationships i.e. one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-many relationships between entities, or while designing tables using SQL. We learnt the implementation of these relationships and how to apply them as per the business logic. Also learnt and saw how to write query to retrieve records/rows or data using these relationships concepts.