What is difference between a Model and an Entity [closed]

Question

I am seeking clarification on the definitions of the terms Entity, Model, DataModel, and ViewModel within the context of software development. Could someone provide a detailed explanation for each of these terms to help me gain a clearer understanding?

Laconic

With regards to the difference between Entity and Model - there is an excellent answer at #5864370 – Bondwoman

Related posts - Entity vs Model vs View Model, Entities VS Domain Models VS View Models & ORM Entities vs. Domain Entities under Entity Framework 6.0 – Alost

Answer 1

The definition of these terms is quite ambiguous. You will find different definitions at different places.

Entity: An entity represents a single instance of your domain object saved into the database as a record. It has some attributes that we represent as columns in our tables.

Model: A model typically represents a real world object that is related to the problem or domain space. In programming, we create classes to represent objects. These classes, known as models, have some properties and methods (defining objects behavior).

ViewModel: The term ViewModel originates from the MVVM (Model View ViewModel) design pattern. There are instances in which the data to be rendered by the view comes from two different objects. In such scenarios, we create a model class which consists of all properties required by the view. It’s not a domain model but a ViewModel because, a specific view uses it. Also, it doesn’t represent a real world object.

DataModel: In order to solve a problem, objects interact with each other. Some objects share a relationship among them and consequently, form a data model that represents the objects and the relationship between them.

In an application managing customer orders, for instance, if we have a customer and order object then these objects share a many to many relationship between them. The data model is eventually dependent on the way our objects interact with each other. In a database, we see the data model as a network of tables referring to some other tables.

To know more about object relationships visit my blog post: Basics of Object Relationships

For more details visit my blog post: Entity vs Model vs ViewModel vs DataModel

Ashby

Isn't it opposite? That Entity has data and behaviors while Model is object saved to the DB? – Shagbark

His updated blog post is gauravgahlot.in/entity-model-viewmodel-datamodel – Cantlon

Thank you @LeventKANTAROGLU I just updated the answer as well. – Ashby

Answer 2

I hope I've not missed your point here king.net...

Anyway, presuming you're talking about entity modelling or entity-relationship modelling (ERDs):

• an entity represents any real world entity - e.g. student, course,
• an entity will have attributes - e.g. student has first name, surname, date-of-birth
• an entity will have relationships - e.g. student "is enrolled on" course (where student and course are entities with attributes and "is enrolled on" is the relationship.
• the relationship may be "one-to-one", "one-to-many" or "many-to-many" - e.g. one student "is enrolled on" many courses and similarly one course "has" many students.
• relationships also have cardinality

Adding relationships between entities creates a "data model". You've modeled some real world system and the internal entities/ objects in that system. Next step is to normalise it to ensure it meets "normal form".

In ERD terms, you may have "logical" and "physical" models. The logical describes the data-model in simple high-level terms that witholds the technical detail required to implement it. It represents the system solution overview. The physical model includes technical details required to actually implement the system (such as "many-to-many join tables" needed to implement "many-to-many" relationships).

Here are some tutorials on-line (though I'm sure there must be thousands):

• http://www.maakal.com/maakalDB/Database101ERDpart1.htm
• http://www.itteam-direct.com/gwentrel.htm
• http://www.bkent.net/Doc/simple5.htm

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "model" and "view model" in a related context. Not sure if you may be confusing this with Model-View-Controller paradigm (MVC). Here, a model is some data component and the view represents an observer of that data (such as a table or graph UI component). There's lots on-line explaining "model view controller" or "MVC".

Hope this helps, Wayne

Abortive

Thank you to answer and explain. I'm not about just MVC pattern, but I mean all 'MVx' patterns -MVC, MVCP, MVVM. Thank you again. Helpful. – Laconic

Gaurav Gahlot's answer is correct and directly addressed the question. Wayne's response is accurate also but not as direct an answer. What is missing from all of these answers are concrete code samples showing the type of code constructs that go into each logical concept ... this would make this answer crystal clear for all. – Amyotonia

Answer 3

Entity:

An entity is the representation of a real-world element within Object Relational Mapping (ORM) as the Entity Framework. This representation will be mapped to a table in a database and its attributes will be transformed into columns. An entity is written using a POCO class that is a simple class, as you can see in the following example in C#:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;

namespace MyAplication.Entity
{
    public class Person
    {
        public long PersonId { get; set; }
        public string Name { get; set; }
        public short Age { get; set; }
    }
}

Working with UI creation is a complex task. To keep things organized, programmers separate their applications into layers.

Each layer is responsible for a task and this prevents the code from being messed up. It is in this scenario that the architectural patterns like the MVC and the MVVM appear.

Model:

Within the MVC we have a layer responsible for representing the data previously stored, a given could be an instance of a person modeled in the previous example. This layer is the Model. This template will be used to construct the view.

ViewModel:

A ViewModel in the MVVM architecture is much like a Model in the MVC architecture. However a ViewModel is a simplified representation of the data with only the information that is required for the construction of a view.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using MyAplication.Web.ViewModel.BaseViewModel;

namespace MyAplication.Web.ViewModel.Person
{
    public class PersonNameViewModel : BaseViewModel<string>
    {
        //I just neet the name
        public string Name { get; set; }
    }
}

DataModel:

It is simply an abstract model (this model is different from the MVC layer model) which establishes the relationships that exist between the elements that represent real-world entities. It is a very comprehensive subject.

Mitziemitzl

Answer 4

First of all,to know about Entity you must know about Class. All of them represent same fields but the terminology changes based on declaration.

Let us consider a table from any database[SQL,ORACLE,Informix,Cassandra..] as example.

CLASS:

Generally a table is a considered as a class until it is added to edmx or dbmx.

 //Student class
        public class Student()
        {
        //Properties
        public int StudentNumber;
        public string StudentName;
        }

ENTITY:

• After drag drop/adding the table into dbmx/edmx it is referred to as Entity.

• Each Entity is generated from its corresponding class and we can add attributes to entity which are used for performing operations using
  linq or entity.

DATAMODEL:

• Contains all the fields in table.

• DATAMODEL is a direct class reference to your cshtml or controller where you can access the attributes to perform CRUD operations.

VIEWMODEL:

• Some situations occur where we need to perform CRUD operations more than one model(table).
• So we combine all our required models in a class and define them in its constructor.

Example: Lets assume

//Student class
public class Student()
{
//Properties
public int StudentNumber;
public string StudentName;
}
//Marks Class
Public class Marks()
{
public int Maths;
public int Physics;
public int Chemistry;

//Now sometimes situations occur where we have to use one datamodel inside //other datamodel.
public Student StudentModel;
}

Morly

Answer 5

Simple talk:
DTO stands for Data Transfer Object. DTOs are mainly used for transferring data between services (web services, APIs, etc.) which can encompass variety of properties of different entities (with or without their ID). Take this row as an example of a DTO: Consider that a shopping website is going to send its shipping requests to a shipping company by a web-service. Its DTO would be something like this: CustomerFullName, ShippingFee, ShippingAddress. In this example CustomerFullName is combination of properties FirstName + LastName for the Customer entity, and ShippingFee is the result of several processes of destination, tax, etc over some other entities.

On the contrary, Entities are bunch of properties gathered to represent a single entity with a specific ID (e.g., Teacher, Student, Employee, etc.). In other words, DTOs are a bunch of meaningless properties gathered to be sent to the client and a DTO doesn't necessarily have relationship to the other DTOs, while an Entity includes properties of a specific object with meaningful relation to the other entities. In a relational database paradigm, we can look at DTOs as views' row while Entities are tables' row with the primary key.

However, Model is a combination of these two. A model can contain several related entities plus extra data to handle real-world application/UI problems. Consider a Model named CustomerOrdersModel that contains Customer Entity, List<Order> Entities, and an extra Boolean flag PayWithCredit specifying whether user is going to pay with debit-card or credit-card.

Cateran

Answer 6

They are synonyms.

Different libraries, frameworks, books, and teachers will tend to prefer one over the other, or even give different specific, contextual meanings to these terms, but you should feel free to use whichever you yourself prefer.

They both mean a code representation of a thing that in your domain model has an identity and a lifecycle.

Zamia

This doesn't add anything to the existing answers. Also, they are not synonyms. – Larva

@GertArnold care to elaborate? Like I said - depending on which book you're going by. Traditional business models and entities are absolutely synonyms in software design vernacular. There is not a single dev that would not understand one to mean the other. However, yeah, I'll concede that you can technically model anything - the "view model" mentioned in the original question is a good example - although why would you even need to add the word model to that symbol's name, and why libraries and frameworks indeed often do, is beyond me. It's quite redundant. – Zamia

1. The existing answers said enough. 2. If you say "They are synonyms" it means that all four words can be used interchangeably. Even though there's no single one correct answer to this question, that definitely isn't true. – Larva