What is an Attribute?

• The basic unit of informationabout any entity occurrence

• Attributes may be local to the entity("Name", "Address") or inherited byrelationship from another entity

• Eventually those attributes whichmigrate into the physical designbecome columns in database tables

• Synonymous and/or related terms are data element (as in a data flow diagram), column (of a database table), and data item

Attribute: A property of an entity.

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