mapping of row in one table to column in another table?

[steffy john]

i have a data set where in i take value from one table which itself is a column in another table. it would look something like this.

TABLE1

ID CATEGORY ACTIVITY
551 ML ART
552 PTL SWEEPS
553 RDC PIPO
554 ML PIPO

TABLE2

ACTIVITY ML PTL RDC
ART 10 15 15
PIPO 15 15 11
SWEEPS 12 10 15

NOW SUPPOSE I WANT FOR 551 ID AND CATEGORY 'ML' IN TABLE1 TO FETCH VALUE OF ML i.e '10' IN TABLE2 FOR ACTIVITY 'ART'.
how do i do this in sql?
Thanks in advance.

[Rabbit]

The problem is that your table is improperly designed in that it is not normalized. You should not have a field for each category, instead, you should just have a category field like you do in table1. That way you can join on activity and category to get the value.

For more information, please read our article on normalization: http://bytes.com/topic/access/insigh...ble-structures