[reaanb2]

I disagree. From a fact-oriented modeling perspective, relationships among entities are already well-modelled and represented in tables. There's a reason the relational model calls tables relations - they relate things. The mistake here is viewing tables/rows as representing entities, FK constraints as representing relationships, and viewing entities as containers of attributes rather than the subjects of facts.

Joining tables is composing complex facts from simple ones, and is the opposite of normalization which is decomposing complex facts into simpler ones. The ability to join tables on arbitrary conditions is fundamental to the ability to ask a DBMS complex questions and have it respond with all the facts that match that question.