what is the difference between entity id and increment id in sales_order table

Question

which id should be used for order status update. How should the status be updated?

Answer 1

Entity Id (entity_id column name in table) is the primary key which is used for the table to keep unique id per row and its auto-increment so when a new row is generated/inserted automatically generate latest id.

Increment id (increment_id column name in table) is for Order purpose. It's used for order fetching/display information of a specific order based on the increment id.

Increment ID is also used for third party API to connect order related stuff to another platform.

You can also change the default behavior of Increment id as per your requirement. Like 000000001 to T000000001.