help with table structure and relationships

[nip]

I am trying to make a database for my test participants.
I have 10 participants and have a table with them called
participants which includes an auto number ID and then the
participant number and start date. Now I want to rank
these participants. So I have created 3 more tables one
is called rankdescription and includes 5 ranking
descriptions which all 10 participants will have to rank.
The 2nd table is rankdate and includes 8 different dates
by which each of the 10 participants will have to rank
each of the 5 ranking descriptions and finally the 3rd
table is called rank and contains the numbers 1 to 5 for
high to low plus must also allow for an entry in dollar
figures or show a message in a report that the category
was not ranked. I can not get these to all talk to one
another and am totally lost on which type of relationship
I should be setting up so that the
information is only entered once in each table. Is this
possible and
if so can someone walk me through it.
Thanks

 

[Jeff Boyce]

It sounds from your description that your "rankings" could be considered
"attributes" of your participants.

If you have participant info in a participant table (say, ID#, [Start date],
FirstName, ...), why not have the ranking info there too?

Keep your (lookup) ranking criteria table, and add in fields to your
participant table to hold the key/ID from the other tables. What ties them
together is considered a primary key - foreign key relationship -- the
ranking tables have primary keys, which, when entered in the respective
fields of the participant table, serve as "foreign keys", pointing back to
the respective rows in the lookup tables.

Or have I misunderstood?

 

[nip]

I think I am following you. Let's see:
In the participant table I should put a field called
rankdiscripID, rankID, and rankdateID, correct?
Now these will all be numbers because they are all auto
numbers but auto numbers have no duplicates while the
number, long integer that I put in the participants will
have Yes duplicates ok checked?
Then how do I get the number say of the date into the
participant table? Each participant should have one of
every entry in the fields of all the tables so working
with the one table (dates) may simplify my retention at
this point.
Do I make a form say called participant rank dates and
include a participant number and the field for the rank
date?
Thanks oh yes and one other thing, do I have to set up any
type of relationship between these tables and if so (using
dates as example) how would I accomplish this?
Thanks again.