Linking table to multiple tables

One of the things that is common between most genealogy databases is
that they will have one screen were you log all the information for a
given person and then (maybe) have a link to a source record.

I'm trying to create a database where you have tables that record facts
and then link those facts to a person record. For example, I'll have
tables for Birth, Marriage, Military Service, Tax Records, etc. They
are separate tables because each type has a different dataset. The
data associated with a birth event is different than the data
associated with military service.

I need to be able to tie all these records together and attach to a
single person. For example, Mary Sue Trekkie may have a couple of
records for birth (bible record, birth certificate), a record for
marriage (marriage license), a couple of record for a will (being
mentioned in, her own will).

So when displaying the information for Mary Sue Trekkie I need to
display a list of records from all these tables.

I am assuming that I would do this using some kind of linking table
where there is a field that ID's the table and then another field that
gives the specific record ID. I was thinking that I could have a field
in the linking table, perhaps the primary key even, that gives the name
of the table that is in Access (tblBirth, tblMarriage, etc).

I'm not exactly sure how I would get the right information to pull from
the right table and display it in either a Form or a Report in Access.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Do you know of a better way to organize this stuff?

I considered having a single table for events (birth, marriage, school,
death, etc) but each type of data just doesn't fit a single table
structure. I know there has to be a way to do this.

Any indeas would be greatly appreciated.

Tammy

re: Linking table to multiple tables

This is a pretty basic relational database question so I am assuming
you are new to this. You need to have a field in each table that is
common for all related tables. You can use the person's name, but you
will need to make sure it is exactly the same in each table. To tie it
all together you create a query with an outer join (1 to many
relationship) from the main table (this table will hold all names) to
each of the related tables. You will also need to pass a variable (the
person's name) to the query's criteria in order to pull the right
information. You will use this query as the recordsource in your
form/report.

re: Linking table to multiple tables

Am I missing something here, or is this just a parent table with a
whole lot of children? If you need to enter data into only some of
them, you could just create a tabbed form and put the subforms there.
Or did I miss the gist of the question?