I have the following tables and I am unsure of the benefits of using a
junction table to join (for lack of a better word) the two tables.

table 1
ClientID
StateID

table 2
StateID
State

I am in the development stages, so I can do it either way. I just want to
understand why one way is recommended over the other.

Based upon the limited information, it doesn't appear that you need a
'junction' table.

Table1 is directly linked to Table2 by StateID.

Show quoteHide quote

In a nutshell, a table should represent only one set of entities, or a
single entity type. The goal is that one would want to update/delete one set
of entities without affecting the other.

The general design rules of thumb are:
--- When you have a 1-to-1 relationship between two entity types, unless
there are any non-dependency preserving relationships, you may represent
them in a single table.
--- When you have a m-to-1 relationship between two entity types, you should
use a referential integrity constraint ( FK ) between the tables
representing each entity types.
--- When you have an m-to-n relationship between two or more entity types,
you should introduce an "association" table (or "junction" table as you put
it ) that reduces the schema to two or more many-to-one relationships on
each table representing individual entity types.

too long...
datetime between problem
SQL Join question - getting most recent value in a history table
Select problem Msg. 156
NEED HElP with Properly applying DISTINCT function to Count Aggregate.