What is Database seeders in Laravel, and what role does it play in a real application?

What is Database seeders in Laravel, and what role does it play in a real application? In Laravel, database seeders should be understood as part of a larger application architecture rather than as an isolated API call. Seeders can insert required reference data such as roles, statuses, categories or demonstration records. A strong understanding includes its purpose, the layer where it belongs, the data or request flow it affects, and the situations where another mechanism may be more appropriate. Practical context: Seeders provide intentional data-loading workflows while model factories generate realistic model records for development and testing. The specific focus here is database seeders: Seeders can insert required reference data such as roles, statuses, categories or demonstration records. This question is designed to test not only terminology, but also how the concept fits into Laravel's request, application, database, security, or deployment workflow.