A method of modelling and storing data by breaking it into three parts: the entities, their attributes and their values.
The basic idea is to store attributes, and their corresponding values, as rows in a single table.
Typically the table has at least three columns: entity, attribute, and value. Though if there is only a single relevant entity, e.g. a table for application configuration or option settings, the entity column can be excluded.
Entity attribute value modeling (also known as EAV) is an alternative to 'row modeling', i.e. storing all entity values for the same attribute in the same table column.
Contrasted with a traditional relational data model, it permits variable associations of attributes with entities.
