[Python-Dev] PEP 557: Data Classes

[Mike Miller]

(Apologies for reviving a dead horse, but may not be around at the blessed time.)

As potential names of this concept, I liked record and row, but agreed they were 
a bit too specific and not quite exact.  In my recent (unrelated) reading 
however, I came across another term and think it might fit better, called an 
"entity."

It has some nice properties:

- Traditional dictionary definition, meaning "thing"
- Same specificity as the current base-class name: object
- Corresponds to a class or instance (depending on context) in data
   terminology


From: http://ewebarchitecture.com/web-databases/database-entities

     An entity is a thing or object of importance about which data must be
     captured. Information about an entity is captured in the form of attributes
     and/or relationships.

     All things aren't entities—only those about which information should be
     captured. If something is a candidate for being an entity and it has no
     attributes or relationships, it isn't an entity.


Thoughts?  Another candidate is "container" but is not very descriptive.

-Mike



On 2017-09-16 11:14, Steve Holden wrote:
> I therefore propose "row", which is sufficiently neutral to avoid most current 
> opposition and yet a common field-oriented mechanism for accessing units of 
> retrieved data by name.