A base object is a table containing consolidated data for an entity, such as a Customer or Address entity. Each base object consists of system columns and user-defined column. Common system columns include ROWID_OBJECT, CONSOLIDATION_IND, and LAST_UPDATE_DATE. Typical user-defined columns for a Customer base object could be FIRST_NAME, LAST_NAME, and MIDDLE_NAME.

The base object represents the Best Version of the Truth (BVT). There are two types of base objects:

A merge-style base object contains the BVT data.
A link-style base object contains links to the source data which can then be used to recreate the BVT when necessary.

The Data Steward oversees the process of merging and consolidating data to create a BVT.