Entities are representations of a database table in memory. In the AI-Framework, data manipulation is done in memory and then it automatically *) updates the actual database. Entities are more than just a copy of a table on disk in memory. They contain additional properties and methods. This adds a functional approach to data manipulation and leads to the following definition.
Definition: An entity is an object, that is fundamentally defined not by its attributes, but by a thread of continuity and identity.
An entity has an identity, contains value objects (properties) and methods, may contain other entities and can be mutable.
*) Automatically updates the database means that the AI-Framework generates all the code to create, read, update and delete in the appropriate database. The programmer writes the model without having to worry about statements like INSERT and UPDATE.
An entity is a representation in memory of a table record. The entity is part of an entity collection.
AI-Framework:
There are two levels of entities within the AI-Framework. The generated entity and the model entity. This chapter (Modelling applications) deals with the model entity.
The basic concepts of how to build an entity can be read in How to > Basic concepts > Entities .
Entities can be expanded with Properties and Methods. These are described in the following subcategories.
Article ID: 220
Created: Tue, Dec 3, 2019
Last Updated: Tue, Jan 28, 2020
Online URL: https://wiki-ai-framework.abstract-it.nl/article/entities-220.html