Question

According to wikipedia “An entity may be defined as a thing which is recognized as being capable of an independent existence and which can be uniquely identified”. I don’t get this independent existance because I’ve been given examples of entities such as “fees” or a “house sale”, you can’t have fees without taking a “class” and no “house sale” without having a house. Where am I confused?

Answer 1

I agree with you – I don’t think independent existence adds much to the definition.

It is better to think of an entity as something you might wish to store information about e.g.

order
order history
customer
supplier
order item
address
address history

N.B. entities are never pluralised