A technician is documenting a hospital system where each patient can have many appointments, but every appointment belongs to exactly one patient and one doctor. The technician must describe how the Appointment table relates to the Patient table. Which term correctly describes this relationship?
This is correct because one patient row can be referenced by many appointment rows, while each appointment row references exactly one patient through a foreign key. That is the definition of a one-to-many relationship. The same pattern applies between Doctor and Appointment, so documenting it as one-to-many accurately captures the cardinality in both directions.
Why this answer
Because one patient can be associated with many appointments while each appointment is tied to a single patient, the relationship is one-to-many. This is implemented by placing a PatientID foreign key in the Appointment table, which also allows a similar DoctorID foreign key to capture the appointment-to-doctor link.
Exam trap
The trap here is confusing one-to-many with many-to-many, which would only apply if a single appointment could involve multiple patients simultaneously.