How do you link tables that have many-to-many relationships?

In a many-to-many relationship between two tables, a junction table (also known as an associative table or cross-reference table) is essential for effectively linking the two tables. A junction table contains foreign keys from both of the related tables, allowing for the establishment of a many-to-many relationship. This means that each record in one table can relate to multiple records in the other table, and vice versa.

For example, consider a scenario where you have a table of students and a table of courses. Each student can enroll in multiple courses, and each course can have multiple students. To manage this relationship, you would create a junction table that contains columns for student IDs and course IDs. Each entry in this junction table represents an association between a student and a course, facilitating the many-to-many relationship without duplicating data in either original table.

The other methods listed are not suitable for linking many-to-many relationships. A foreign key typically relates records in one table to records in another table in a one-to-many relationship rather than addressing the complexity of a many-to-many relationship. Direct linking implies a straightforward connection between the two tables without yet accounting for the need for intermediary data structure, which is essential for maintaining referential integrity in many-to-many scenarios. Nested queries