Entity: An entity is a thing which can be distinctly identified.

An entity may be an object

with a physical existence such as employee, dog, person etc. or may be an object with a
conceptual existence such as college, organization, job, etc. Entities are the basic units used
in modeling classes. An entity set is a group of similar object with same set of attributes or
properties. Entities can be classified into regular entities (strong entities) and weak entities.
A weak entity is an entity that is existence-dependent on some other entity, in the sense that
is cannot exist if that other entity does not also exist. A regular entity on the other hand is an
entity that is not weak.

Each entity type is shown as a rectangle containing the name of the entity type in question,
for a weak entity type, the border of the rectangle is doubled.

STRONG ENTITY WEAK ENTITY

Attributes: Each entity has attributes that describe it. The properties that characterize an
entity set are called its attributes. Attributes are also known as data element, data item, data
fields. All entities or relationships of a given type have certain kinds of properties in
common. To store data on an entity set, we have to create a model for it by gathering
important properties concern to organization. Attributes can be

Simple or composite :A composite attribute contains numbers of simple attributes. For

example the employee name contains first name, middle name and last name. The employee
name is considered as composite attribute where as first name, middle name and last name
are called simple attribute.
Single or multi-valued :Most attribute have a single value for a particular entity; such
attributes are called single-valued. For ex. father’s name, age is single valued attribute of an
entity. Often some attributes require different values. For ex. Room type in a lodge,
qualification of a person etc.
Missing / null value :In some cases a particular entity may not have an applicable value for
an attribute. unknown/not applicable
Base or derived: in some cases, one attribute is depend on some other attributes for example
DA attribute is dependant on salary. The DA attribute is hence called a derived attribute
where as salary is base or stored attribute.

student

name roll class sex age