Understanding an Entity

As described in the Weave Configuration Reference:

An entity provides a basic reference to an item that will be searchable and reportable within the system.

An entity can be associated with many Weave data elements:

  • One or more tables with geometry columns via a spatial mapper.

  • Multiple table objects via data definitions.

An entity and its associated objects can be represented diagrammatically as follows.

The named entity, graffiti, has two identifiers (keys) associated with it.

The graffiti entity has two spatial database tables associated with it via a spatial mapper.

The graffiti entity has three attribute tables associated with it via data definitions.

The entity with identifier 2 is currently selected.

This identifier value links the graffiti entity to rows in the Graffiti Documents and Graffiti Field Visits table but not the Graffiti Address table as no address exists for that piece of graffiti.

Similarly, the graffiti entity is linked to a point spatial location held in the graffiti_p table.