title: What is Spring Data's PersistentEntity?
body: <p>I've read through the JavaDoc and source code for <a href="http://docs.spring.io/spring-data/commons/docs/current/api/org/springframework/data/mapping/PersistentProperty.html" rel="nofollow"><code>PersistentProperty</code></a>, <a href="http://docs.spring.io/spring-data/commons/docs/current/api/org/springframework/data/mapping/PersistentEntity.html" rel="nofollow"><code>PersistentEntity</code></a>, <a href="http://docs.spring.io/spring-data/commons/docs/current/api/org/springframework/data/mapping/model/BasicPersistentEntity.html" rel="nofollow"><code>BasicPersistentEntity</code></a>, etc. and am still not clear what these objects are.</p>
  
  <p>Are these <em>data</em> objects?
  Or do they <em>describe</em> the data model?</p>
  
  <p>If they are data objects, where's the data? For example, in <code>PersistentProperty</code> I see the property's <a href="http://docs.spring.io/spring-data/commons/docs/current/api/org/springframework/data/mapping/PersistentProperty.html#getName--" rel="nofollow">name</a> and <a href="http://docs.spring.io/spring-data/commons/docs/current/api/org/springframework/data/mapping/PersistentProperty.html#getType--" rel="nofollow">type</a>, but no value.</p>