What is the primary responsibility of a factory in design patterns?

The primary responsibility of a factory in design patterns is to create objects. This concept is rooted in the factory design pattern, which abstracts the instantiation process, allowing for the creation of objects without specifying the exact class of the object that will be created.

This approach provides several benefits, such as promoting loose coupling in the code, enhancing maintainability, and allowing for more flexible code that can be adapted or extended without significant modifications. By using a factory, developers can easily incorporate new classes or change the way objects are created without altering the code that uses these objects.

In contrast, managing object states, maintaining object databases, and defining object attributes are responsibilities that typically fall outside the scope of a factory. While these are important aspects of software design and implementation, they do not align with the primary role of a factory as defined in design patterns. The factory's focus is specifically on the creation aspect, making it a key mechanism for handling object instantiation in a clean and efficient manner.