"The associative model doesn't use tables. It stores all the "things" (name, fax number, birthday, etc.) completely separate from the "relationships" (known as "associations", which is where the name comes from) between those things. For example: Person has a name, Person has a birthday, Person has a photography, and so on. If you want to add a new piece of information to an existing thing, you create the thing and then associate it with the old one without modifying the structure of the database."Link