Multiple Distributors of one item

[Joel Saltzman]

I have a Point of Sale System that has a table of inventory items. I buy these items from different distributors. Sometimes I have 1 item manufactured by 1 company but I cannot buy it from the manufacturer, so I buy it from a distributor. Sometimes I have more than one distributor though

How can I relate my Inventory Item to many distributors and the distributors to the one manufacturer item?

I thought the simple one to many relationship would work but I feel like there is a better way to do it...

Edited April 11, 2007 by Guest

[mr_vodka]

You can have a join table that is used as a many to many relationship between the Items table and the Supplier table. I said supplier table because I dont think there is a need for a seperate distributer and manufacturer table. You can have a supplier table with a type field that you can desginate as a supplier / distributer. Then you can create another join table to have many to many supplies related to distributers that would be in between two table occurence of the supplier table.