How to downgrade Magento Enterprise 2.x to Community edition

Question

My site uses Magento EE 2.1.8, I want to downgrade to Magento CE 2.1.8 , I havn't found steps to do that. I just found lot of articles for Magento 1.
I see that there are two methods for downgrading,

1. Either deleting some enterprise files and db tables from the enterprise setup, or
2. Install a fresh CE setup and migrate extensions and data.

Any help please?

Answer 1

I have Magento EE 2.2.4 as well Community edition 2.2.4

I have did some r&d for this and I have not found any Magento DevDocs Information regarding this, But I have some idea because I am working in EE and below information might be helpful for you.

I have summon information from multiple source as well with my inputs and my local database for cross check.

THERE ARE TWO VALUABLE APPROACHES YOU CAN FOLLOW I.E.

• Removing Unwanted Magento EE files
• Migrating the most usable code from EE version to CE version

First approach, guides you to downgrade your installation of Magento EE by;

Removing all enterprise related files

rm -rf app/etc/enterprise 
rm -rf LICENSE_EE.txt 
rm -rf LICENSE_EE.html 

Remove enterprise attributes

Log in into the back-end and check the whole working as expected. Now, click around to create a new product. While creating a new product, it should fail, as your database still carries enterprise attributes that automatically loaded by Magento and the according source files aren’t present there anymore. It can also be fixed easily by removing the unwanted attributes:

DELETE FROM eav_attribute WHERE source_model LIKE 'enterprise_%'; DELETE FROM eav_attribute WHERE backend_model LIKE 'enterprise_%'; 

DELETE FROM eav_attribute WHERE attribute_code IN ('gift_wrapping_available', 'gift_wrapping_price'); 

Important: Before doing this, always make sure, you don’t require any related data.

URL Index Fixing

Clear the rewrite table, to use the URL keys from the enterprise setup and retrieve required IDs and copy the URL keys

SELECT @entity_type_id:=entity_type_id FROM eav_entity_type WHERE entity_type_code = 'catalog_product'; 
SELECT @attribute_id:=attribute_id FROM eav_attribute WHERE attribute_code = 'url_key' AND entity_type_id = @entity_type_id; 
UPDATE catalog_product_entity_varchar new INNER JOIN catalog_product_entity_url_key old ON (new.attribute_id = @attribute_id AND new.entity_type_id = @entity_type_id AND old.entity_id = new.entity_id) SET new.value = old.value;   

Important: Afterward, ensure to re-index everything in Magento’s back-end.

References

1. https://www.brihaspatitech.com/blog/migrating-from-magento-enterprise-to-magento-community-version-successfully/
2. https://www.transpacific-software.com/blog/migrating-from-magento-enterprise-edition-ee-to-magento-community-version-ce
3. https://www.interactone.com/downgrading-from-magento-enterprise-edition/

This are OLD references But it helps, Above screens shots of from DB is my local EE 2.2.4 ; I compared CE and EE 2.2.4 and found above changes.