What are Entities in Software Development?

In software development, an entity is a piece of data that has a distinct existence and can be independently identified and addressed. Entities can be physical objects, such as customers or products, or abstract concepts, such as orders or payments.

Entities are the building blocks of a database, and they are used to store and manage data in a structured way. Each entity has its own set of attributes, which are the characteristics or properties of the entity, such as its name, address, or date of birth.

For example, a customer entity might have attributes such as name, address, email, and phone number, while a product entity might have attributes such as product name, description, price, and inventory level.

Entities can be related to each other through relationships, which are the connections between entities. For example, a customer might have placed multiple orders, and each order might contain multiple products. In this case, the customer entity is related to the order entity through the relationship of "customer placed order," and the order entity is related to the product entity through the relationship of "order contains product."

Understanding entities and their relationships is essential for designing and implementing databases, as well as for developing software applications that interact with those databases.