What's a term for a container of ambiguous (undefined) entities?

Question

For example, if an entity may have a variable amount of attributes, with varying attribute keys which map to values of different types.

A glob, so to speak. But while each entity is unique, one might iterate over each entities attributes as their attribute keys are already enumerated, but you have to query for them.

Edit:

Right now I have an "EntityContainer" that exists as a wrapper for a list of Entities, which have maps of varying amounts of Key:Value entries.

The Container doesn't know how each Entity is composed, it just provides an interface for a Client to iterate over the Entities, and query for specific Attributes using Keys already enumerated.

The Client knows what it's looking for, but the Container doesn't. Imagine if the Container was a Ship with Wings, Engines, Gears, Fuels, People, etc. However, that Container could also be used to describe a Building with Walls, Windows, Floors, Rooms, People, Equipment, etc. The Client may want to know how many "People" with attribute "Dead" exist in the respective Container.

What would you call this ambiguous Container...

Answer 1

(First off: if you have multiple entities, each with attributes so different that you can't say anything more specific about all the entities (aside from "they're all entities"), a term I prefer over ambiguous or undefined is heterogeneous.)

There's no absolute standard term across all programming languages for a container of heterogeneous entities. The custom is to use the term that applies within the language, because it will denote a specific type with important properties within that language. For example, in C, you would probably refer to a struct. In Java, you might refer to a Collection. In Python, you might refer to a set. Each of these, however, has properties that aren't present in the other two, and trying to refer to one in the context of another language will lead to mismatch problems.

That said, if you're writing informally, I think you stand a good chance of getting the point across by saying collection of entities. A set of entities would connote that the entities are not ordered. A list of entities would connote that they are ordered, without specifying what the ordering actually is. An array of entities would connote that the entities, or their reference pointers, are stored contiguously in computer memory. A group of entities might work, although it might connote too much in a mathematical context.

Answer 2

It sounds like you are describing the Entity-Component-System pattern.

Entity is simply an undifferentiated index.

Component(s) are the attributes, they are tagged with an entity index.

System(s) do the work: they service Components.

People often compare this pattern to a database system where each record (an Entity) has a required unique ID, but can have a variable set of fields (Components).

In the sense that the container is going to have responsibility for the Entities, probably the simplest name is the Entity Manager, and this is often a child to Application (the top level).