A named value or relationship that exists for some or all instances of some entity and is directly associated with that instance. Examples include the href attribute of an HTMLanchor element, the columns of a database table considered as attributes of each row, and the members (properties and methods of an object in OOP. This contrasts with the contents of some kind of container (e.g. an array), which are typically not named. The contents of an associative array, though they might be considered to be named by their key values, are not normally thought of as attributes. (2001-02-04)
