What is another name for an entity in an entity-relationship (ER) diagram?

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BlackTom AI · Accepted Answer

The question asks: What is another name for an entity in an entity-relationship (ER) diagram?

First, acknowledge the information provided: the question text is about ER diagrams, and the given answer suggests that the entity corresponds to a 'Table'. However, the answer_options field is empty, so there are no alternative choices to analyze.

In general practice, in the context of database design, an ER diagram models real-world entities as entities, and when these designs are translated into a relational database, each entity typically maps to a table. This is because a table represents a set of records that share the same attributes, which aligns with the concept of an entity having attributes.

Even though there are no listed options to evaluate here, we can reason about common misconceptions:
- Some might confuse an entity with a 'record' or a 'row'. A row is an instance of an entity, not the entity itself. The entity is the abstraction, while a row is a specific instance.
- Others might think a 'field' or 'attribute' represents an entity. Attributes describe properties of the entity, not the entity as a whole.
- Another potential option could be 'relation' or 'table' when mapping to a database. In many textbooks, 'relation' is used interchangeably with 'table' in the relational model, but in ER contexts, 'entity' remains the higher-level concept, whereas 'table' is the relational implementation.

Given the typical correspondence between ER diagrams and relational schemas, identifying the entity with a table (the relational implementation) is the standard mapping. The key idea is that an entity defines a set of attributes, and these attributes become the columns of the corresponding table in the database.

If you had multiple choices, you would evaluate them by asking: does this term refer to the abstract thing in the ER model (the entity) or to a concrete data structure in the implemented database (like a table)? Correct understanding aligns with mapping an entity to a table in a relational database.

In sum, the conventional interpretation is that an entity in an ER diagram corresponds to a table in the implemented relational schema, while a row (or record) would correspond to a specific instance of that entity, and an attribute corresponds to a column within that table.

MUF0052 ICT Unit 2 - Semester 2, 2025 3.8 Quiz: Design and development

What is another name for an entity in an entity-relationship (ER) diagram?

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