Magento 2: Schema Changes for EE Catalog Staging

Question

Does Magento 2's "EE Catalog Staging" feature rename the entity_id column of the catalog_product_entity_datetime table to row_id?

An old client recently reached out to me to say, after upgrading to Magento 2.1.1 with the EE Catalog Staging feature, that they're seeing the following errors related to some custom code.

Column not found: 1054 Unknown column 'main_table.entity_id' in 'field list'

and tell me their catalog_product_entity_datetime table's entity_id column is gone, replaced by a row_id column.

+--------------+----------------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| Field        | Type                 | Null | Key | Default | Extra          |
+--------------+----------------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| value_id     | int(11)              | NO   | PRI | NULL    | auto_increment |
| attribute_id | smallint(5) unsigned | NO   | MUL | 0       |                |
| store_id     | smallint(5) unsigned | NO   | MUL | 0       |                |
| row_id       | int(10) unsigned     | NO   | MUL | NULL    |                |
| value        | datetime             | YES  |     | NULL    |                |
+--------------+----------------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+

I"m (obviously) following up with my client on this one for more information -- but is this true? Did Magento EE initiate a schema change here?

Answer 1

Yes, Magento EE Staging modules change the schema on install. See: app/code/Magento/CatalogStaging/Setup/InstallSchema.php for datails.

Answer 2

I can't reference the code on account of EE licensing, but in short: Yes. Magento Enterprise Edition 2.1.0 introduced a new 'content staging' feature, which involves some quite invasive changes to the core database schema.

Among other things, all entity_id/product_id/child_id columns in catalog_category_entity* and catalog_product_entity* tables are changed to row_id. There are similar changes across marketing-related content types. Staging covers categories, products, CMS, promotions, and more.

The changes are not arbitrary. They did not literally change entity_id to row_id. The entity IDs still exist, just in a different relation table. What they did was add a layer of abstraction such that changes (to any given content covered by the feature) can be batched and scheduled. You make content changes and add them to a batch, then at the appointed time Magento puts all of them live simultaneously. This is an evolution of some of the basic scheduling functionality that's been present for designs, banners, promo rules, etc. for a long time.

As to changing core table schemas to accomplish this, don't ask me why they chose this approach.