Creating Association between two entries in SQL table - sql

Question

I have a piece of work to do setting up a database for a small enterprise.
Currently I have 5 tables set up:
Customers
Accounts
Associations
Security(Collateral)
References (Reference Codes relating to a Job type)
One of the tasks I have is to create an association table that will link to the Customers table and show the association between 2 customers.
Columns for Association table:
AssociationID
Customer1
AssociationType
Customer2
The output should be "Customer1 is AssocationType of Customer2" eg "Dave is Accountant for Jim"
How do I set it up so that Customer1 & Customer2 are from the Customer's table? I think it might be with Foreign Keys but I am unsure.

Answer 1

You can set up foreign keys:
alter table associations add constraint fk_associations_customer1
foreign key (customer1_id) references customers (customer_id);
alter table associations add constraint fk_associations_customer2
foreign key (customer2_id) references customers (customer_id);
Foreign keys should be made to the primary key, so you need to define customers so:
create table customers (
customer_id int primary key, -- perhaps identity, serial or autoincrement depending on your database
. . .
);
You'll note the naming conventions:
Tables are in the plural (the contain multiple examples of something).
The primary key is the singular followed by _id.
The foreign key is either the same name as, or very similar to, the primary key of the referenced table.