What is an Entity?

Person, place, or thing? (too specific)

Any thing in which the business has an interest? (too vague)

A synonym for a relational table? (misses the point)

An information container in 1st normal form which:

• Records a fixed set of attributes
• Holds 0 to n occurences
• Is a relational abstraction of some real-world concept
• May or may not map to a physical table in the database