I had so much confusion around these three terms in Dynamics CRM until i didnt actually paid my full attention to them and understood which one is what and where to use them.

1. Article(kbarticle)
2. Knowledge Article(knowledgearticle)
3. Knowledge Base Record(knowledgebaserecord)

Let’s understand one by one briefly

1.Article

Articles are actually an old version of knowledge articles in crm. Currently you will see both are present and can be used as per requirement or as you need them. Knowledge Articles have advanced functionality.

for e.g Engagement hub will use your knowledge article entity and you work on them in engagement hub. Articles are specific to Dynamics CRM.

Knowledge article has functionality like versioning and translation. Apart from these functionality remains the same like creating , reviewing , approving and using them.

for more details you can visit below post : https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg309345.aspx#EarlierKBArticle

2.Knowledge Article

As I Mention above, knowledge article is the latest feature in CRM and has rich functionality above the legacy articles.

you can create minor and major versions of article which can be crucial and important if you have an organization where lot of changes and upgrade happens.

Apart from it you can can create knowledge article translation and can be in more than 150 languages. To understand a knowledge article life cycle and other things , see below post :

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg309345.aspx

3.Knowledge Base

The knowledge base record entity represents a record containing the metadata of a knowledge base record in Parature.  It is used specifically for parature integration.

Parature is a cloud-based customer engagement solution which Microsoft acquired in 2014.  Enterprises can deploy Parature to provide self-service capabilities to their customers.

Know more about it :  https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-au/library/dn996872.aspx

I hope this helps!

Cheers!