As you first learned on Creating a Relationship Between Two Table Occurrences, tables and table occurrences aren't the same thing. Now it's time to dig a little deeper into that concept. At their foundations, TOs are graphical representations of the underlying table. They describe which records you can view based on your current context. Because these occurrences are representations, you can make new occurrences of a table without duplicating it (and all its data). FileMaker's not trying to confuse you; it's actually helping you relate to the same table in different ways.
Few databases can manage all their tasks without multiple occurrences of the same table. You've already seen a couple of situations that call for new TOs on the graph. But there are also functional reasons to create new TOs, too. For example, the Invoices database has an Expenses table to record things you buy to service your customers. It also has a Line Items table to record the charges you pass along to your customers. Right now these tables are connected only by way of the Jobs table (Figure 13-6...