Hierarchical relationship?

[David Noriega]

I'm very new to database design so if I murder any terminology, sorry about that. I'm building a database model to store data generated by a commercial scientific application. I'll get a result file for every sample analyzed. I have a sample table for sample name, id, etc. I then break the data into smaller tables, one for each section of data, like identified compounds, unknown compounds, and so on. Even a couple of 'sub' sections, such as individual properties for each identified compound.

I then have a foreign key to link the 'sub' table to the one above it, and then up again to the sample table. But then I start thinking, what if I need to select data from a 'sub' table for only a few select samples? I'm thinking of adding foreign keys to every table so every entry can map back to a single sample.

I guess what I'm asking is, is this the right way of thinking about database design?