[Tables] Better support for Entity de/serialization

[YalinLi0312]

This is an umbrella issue to resolve issues in serialization and deserialization.

We have some customer issues about serialization:

• [ ] https://github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-python/issues/26360
• [ ] https://github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-python/issues/24499
• [ ] https://github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-python/issues/35554

Besides that, we should:

• [ ] https://github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-python/issues/23997
• [x] And align serialization sequence difference between sync and async clients in update_entity and upsert_entity( from comment: https://github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-python/pull/31862#discussion_r1347841711)

We also have a customer issue about deserialization:

• [ ] https://github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-python/issues/25403

After these sub issues are resolved, we should:

• [ ] Clean up serialize.py and deserialize.py.

Here are some thoughts about current Entity implementations:

• Comparing with other languages, Python doesn't have a concrete definition of Entity. This will cause a potential problem that the same entity can be used in Python but not in other languages. We should make Entity compatible with other languages after.
• The current way that we define EntityProperty is not easy to understand. https://github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-python/blob/57165b2f9644222f62ef48ef6b49166646a41058/sdk/tables/azure-data-tables/azure/data/tables/_entity.py#L58 For example, there's a customer issue complaining about better support for int64 in serialization layer.

Some resources:

• https://gist.github.com/annatisch/600f9040aee9b0f60c030d1b9e6b73f0
• Probably can get some ideas from azure-core

[azure-sdk]

Label prediction was below confidence level 0.6 for Model:ServiceLabels: 'Tables:0.17719263,Azure.Core:0.13464577,Docs:0.11433975'

[github-actions[bot]]

Hi @YalinLi0312, we deeply appreciate your input into this project. Regrettably, this issue has remained unresolved for over 2 years and inactive for 30 days, leading us to the decision to close it. We've implemented this policy to maintain the relevance of our issue queue and facilitate easier navigation for new contributors. If you still believe this topic requires attention, please feel free to create a new issue, referencing this one. Thank you for your understanding and ongoing support.