I’m still learning out the EE way to do things, and was hoping for some advice.

I have a website for a small magazine that comes out every few months.

Currently we just have a weblog that holds information about each issue - these fields are Title, Cover image, PDF download link, Issue Summary.

I am thinking of transfering the actual articles to the web too. So you can see an list of issues, click an issue and then see a list of articles for that issue.  These articles should have access to the Issue related information (eg show the front cover and PDF link).

I am unsure what is the best way to relate articles to issues.  I could use categories with a few custom fields to hold the image and the PDF link, and then when we publish an article assign it to a category. Or have a weblog to hold the Issue information and then use a relationshop field to assign the articles to the correct Issue.

In this instance I don’t really see the advantages one has over the other?

This is a textbook use for relationships, in my opinion.  You could do it either way, as you say.

I see using relationships as a more manageable way in this situation.  The biggest advantage that I see in your case is that you already have a weblog that holds the issue information.  You would just need to add a relationship field to your “posts” custom field set.

Using the revere_related_entries tag, you can show the cover image, link, etc… without any trouble.  Depending on your setup, this might be a little harder with categories.