SQL pain

Been having issues with SQL. Proper foreign key constraints and autonumbering getting in my way. I have fallen back to Access just to get a working model and use the GUI to make headway.
I worked with Slackware Apache with MySQL on another project to see if I could go that route too, but learning curve is too steep to do a custom app with. Installing someone else's code is fine, but way to deep for me to make work on this project.
Intentions are to clean up (normalize) what I have now using Access and get some good reporting and stable interface, then get back to getting SQL to work in the background.