'Difference between "Entity" and "Record"?
While studying for my IT exam I came across the following sentence:
"A collection of fields that store information about a certain entity, is a record. A record is a whole row of fields."
..but I have always thought that the correct term for an "object" in a database is an "entity".
So is the correct term an "entity" or a "record"? Or are they the same?
Solution 1:[1]
An entity is defined as “something that exists as a particular and discrete unit.” In terms of identity management, an entity is the logical relationship between two or more records. [...] An entity is also called a “linkage set.” There can be an unlimited number of records in an entity or linkage set. Source
Along these lines, an entity can be a set of records in a table or even across different tables.
Solution 2:[2]
I would say that an entity concept is physicalised by 1 or more tables e.g.
- a product concept might be encapsulated entirely in 1 table
- a person concept might be spread across several tables, for example due to normalisation - all information relating to a person might not exist in the same table.
Sources
This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Overflow and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
Source: Stack Overflow
| Solution | Source |
|---|---|
| Solution 1 | Soren |
| Solution 2 | Dom Turnbull |