Field (computer science)

In computer science, data that has several parts, known as a record, can be divided into fields.

Relational databases

Relational databases arrange data as sets of database records, also called rows.

Each record consists of several fields; the fields of all records form the columns. Examples of fields: name, gender, hair color.

Object-oriented programming

In object-oriented programming, field (also called data member or member variable) is the data encapsulated within a class or object.

In the case of a regular field (also called instance variable), for each instance of the object there is an instance variable: for example, an Employee class has a Name field and there is one distinct name per employee.

A static field (also called class variable) is one variable, which is shared by all instances.

Fields are abstracted by properties, which allow them to be read and written as if they were fields, but these can be translated to getter and setter method calls.

See also

• Class variable
• Data hierarchy
• Information hiding
• Instance variable
• Locality of reference
• Member variable
• Mutator method
• Record (computer science)

External links

• Field (computer science) @ Wikipedia