An entity type is specified as a collection of entities, having the same attributes. Entity type typically corresponds to one or several related tables in the database. A characteristic or trait which defines or uniquely identifies the entity is called entity type.

For example, a student has student_id, department, and course as its characteristics.

An entity type in a database management system (DBMS) refers to a category of similar entities that share common attributes. It represents a class of objects or concepts in the real world that are identifiable and distinguishable. In the context of the Entity-Relationship (ER) model, an entity type is depicted as a rectangle and is typically named to reflect the objects it represents, such as “Customer,” “Product,” or “Employee.” Each instance of an entity type is represented by a unique set of values for its attributes, and these instances are often stored as rows in a database table.