Identify attributes

Entities contain attributes, which are characteristics or modifiers, qualities, amounts, or features. An attribute is a fact or nondecomposable piece of information about an entity. Later, when you represent an entity as a table, its attributes are added to the model as new columns.

You must identify the entities before you can identify the database attributes. After you determine the entities, ask yourself, “What characteristics am I required to know about each entity?” For example, in an address entity, you probably require information about street, city, and zip code. Each of these characteristics of the address entity becomes an attribute.