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Software Engineering

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    "An Entity on the other hand is business logic." Predominantly, "entity" is used to refer to a database model. What you're referring to (business logic) is generally called the "domain object". From a purely English perspective, you're not wrong that "entity" is very vague and pretty much literally just means "thing that exists" and could be applied to almost anything, but from a developer-centric perspective, "entity" tends to imply datalayer. Commented May 31, 2021 at 9:15
  • At an English level yes it pretty vague, I think though it has a much more defined meaning in software. For example: ECS - Entity Component System. It probably depends on the neck of programming you come from. However I am using it coming from the domain/business logic angle. In this case I think the existence of the term ERM (Entity Relational Mapping) undermines your definition. If the Entity lives in the data layer, why is it being mapped from the data layer? Sounds more like the Entity lives above the data layer. In which case the fact that it can be serialised is irrelevant to the Entity. Commented May 31, 2021 at 9:32
  • I think you're msunderstanding ERM: "In software engineering, an ER model is commonly formed to represent things a business needs to remember in order to perform business processes. Consequently, the ER model becomes an abstract data model, that defines a data or information structure which can be implemented in a database, typically a relational database." The entities in question represent the data models for the database (which, ideally, mimic the domain objects, but that is not always feasible). Commented May 31, 2021 at 9:54
  • @Flater. Thankyou for pointing that out. Looks like I need to spend some time reading up on this. Commented Jun 1, 2021 at 0:04
  • I can't tell the difference between any of your particular Objects - honestly, I felt like that when reading the list of 5 types of objects that follow that statement. Commented Aug 22, 2023 at 19:21