Hi gizmo,
Given that it is almost always the practice to define a field that is populated from a reference table, as an SREL (foreign key reference) to the reference table, the out-of-box behaviour of a dropdown is typically to save the internal identifier of the reference table record that is selected.
The advantages of that behaviour include the following:
- The symbol and description in the reference table can be changed as your requirements or processes evolve (e.g. from 'Low' to '5 - Low' or '1 - Low', 'Lowest' or 'Insignificant', etc.) without having to worry about updating any tables that contain those symbols.
- The symbol and description can be presented in multiple languages, again without having to physically update tables that contain them.
Why do you want to put the symbol into the database? Is it to make reporting easier? You can if you wish add an 'attribute alias' to make the symbol visible through the ODBC interface, instead of the internal id. Or just do the join, which is highly unlikely to have any noticeable performance impact. It is nearly always better to stick with the out-of-box behaviour, which is consistent throughout the data model of the 'mdb'.
Regards,
James