Magento2: What is the function of attribute_id?

Question

I have installed Magento CE 2.1.7 with sample data.

In the table catalogsearch_fulltext_scope1 of my magento database. I see

The entity id, I believe is unique for every product. The attribute_id for every product has three values, 73, 74 and 75.

Clearly, we have

product name for attribute_id 73
SKU id for attribute_id 74, and
product description for attribute_id 75

I have the following questions regarding attribute_id

1. What's the exact role of attribute_id?
2. Why the values of product name, SKU id and product description are stored in this way inside the database?
3. Why the numbers 73 , 74 and 75? Why not 1 , 2 , 3 ?

Answer 1

It is because products are stored using the EAV model, i.e. the Entity Attribute Value model, this means that any given product can have several unique atrributes assigned to it, which may or may not be true for other products, so in order to reduce storage, it is stored using the EAV.

The values themselves are arbitrary, i.e. computer-generated and actually not important to know, as you can use Magento to retrieve them by attribute code.

For more information, you can look at these pages:

EAV explained by Wikipedia

The Magento 2 model defined