I'm still confused on what associations have responsibility for holding the keys in their own tables and what ones depend on other tables. Is this right? Association Responsibility ----------- -------------- has_one foreign has_many foreign belongs_to local has_and_belongs_to_many foreign (in separate table) So basically, anything with belongs_to should have the key of the thing it belongs to in its table. All other associations don't. Right? Have I missed any associations? Also, in the examples I see some occurrences of "belong_to". Is this a typo? Thanks, Carl