What is the correct name and significance of EAV table pivot? I've been forced to use a very uncomfortable structure for a table. After trying to up similar examples, I've discovered the EAV, which seems almost like a pivot of said structure. The attribute order is not set in stone (except that there are no new attributes after a NULL column). For the max amount of attributes N, there are 2*N columns in pairs of Attribute_Name - Attribute value.

EAV example:

ID| Entity  | Attribute  | Value
__________________________________
1 | Entity1 | Attribute1 | Value1
2 | Entity2 | Attribute1 | Value2
3 | Entity2 | Attribute2 | Value3
4 | Entity2 | Attribute3 | Value4
5 | Entity3 | Attribute1 | Value5
6 | Entity3 | Attribute2 | Value6


Example of my table:

Entity  | A_Name1    | A_Value1 | A_Name2       | A_Value2 | A_Name3       | A_Value3
______________________________________________________________________________________
Entity1 | Attribute1 | Value1   | NULL          | NULL     | NULL          | NULL
Entity2 | Attribute2 | Value3   | Attribute1    | Value2   | Attribute3    | Value4
Entity3 | Attribute2 | Value6   | Attribute1    | Value5   |  NULL         | NULL


Should this be considered separate from EAV structure? Is there any classification for this kind of table structure, or is it one of a kind? Basically, I want to learn as much as possible about it and ways to work around it.

EDIT: Forgot to mention -- the Attribute names might also repeat like this:

Entity  | A_Name1    | A_Value1 | A_Name2       | A_Value2 | A_Name3       | A_Value3
______________________________________________________________________________________
Entity1 | Attribute1 | Value1   | NULL          | NULL     | NULL          | NULL
Entity2 | Attribute2 | Value3   | Attribute1    | Value2   | Attribute2    | Value4
Entity3 | Attribute2 | Value6   | Attribute1    | Value5   |  NULL         | NULL
The process of pivoting data is often called transposition, as it is similar to the matrix operation of that name in mathematics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transpose), though that isn't really what you are doing in your example.

In your output you still have the EAV pattern but stored less efficiently. The columns "Entity, A_Name1, A_Value1" is one attribute in the EAV pattern, "Entity, A_Name2, A_Value2" is another, and so forth. Each of your value columns could contain a range of probably unrelated attribute values so you are not in any sort of normal form and reporting is likely to be even more difficult than the original layout.

A proper transposition in this case would be:

Entity  | Attribute1 | Attribute2 | Attribute2 
----------------------------------------------
Entity1 | Value1     | NULL       | NULL       
Entity2 | Value2     | Value3     | Value4     
Entity3 | Value5     | Value6     | NULL       


This way each column contains data for only one attribute.