As an open source technology for building e-commerce platforms, Magento provides flexibility in operations. It allows a flexible shopping cart management along with complete control over functionalities of website. It comes with powerful SEO, marketing, and management tools. Most importantly, it uses an accurate database system to use the property significant for an e-commerce business. Magento database is based on the EAV model.

About the EAV Model:
EAV or entity, attribute, and value model is used by Magento to bring more efficiency in website development. Entity refers to a data item like customers, categories, and products. On the other hand, the attribute is also a data item but it is related to each entity.

For example, price, title, and description of a product are the attributes. Lastly, value entails the valuation of an entity’s attribute. This model brings scalability to your website. You can add anything to database without altering its basic structure.

Database Structure of Customers:
As mentioned above, database of Magento customers is stored in the EAV model that uses tables for customer entity, customer address entity, and customer groups. Each of these tables is one storage area having different fields. For example, customer entity table stores primary information about a customer in the fields that include:

• Customers email
• Primary ID/ key
• Active status
• Time created/ updated
• Website or store ID
• Entity type
• Attribute set

Similarly, customer address entity also has the same storage method in which customer_address_entity is the primary table.

Database Structure of Catalog:

Typically, the database for products on an e-commerce website is quite large. Due to this volume of data, Magento is the preferred platform for these businesses. The database of Magento catalog module also uses EAV model divided into category and product sections.

The method of storage used for the category table is similar to the method used for Magento customers. The primary table used in this method is catalog_category_entity. Here, you must keep in mind that a parent id is used for storing information related to relationship between different categories.

The tables used for primary storage in catalog entity are similar to the customer entity. In this regard, tables with catalog_product_link define the relationship between different products. Tables with catalog_product_option provide information of options available in a product. They are linked to catalog product bundles. Similarly, tables with catalog_product_website express relation between a product and website.

Database Structure of Sales:

In Magento, database for sales module stores important information related to the sales process. It includes the order, quote, shipment, invoice, and credit memo of a product. The tables in this module are stored in a different Magento database model. For example,

Quote table will provide order information whenever a customer or an admin creates a new shopping cart. It contains details about items in the order, address, and selected modes of payment.
Order table provides detailed information after confirmation of an order by the customer.
Invoice table gives information after processing of an order. It stores details about items included in the order and other information required for reporting and analysis.
Shipment table works like an invoice that contains information of cancelation or shipment of an order. This table is similar to credit memo table used in Magento based websites.

Apart from these, there are several other tables used for database system in Magento. They include information of order status, information of taxes on a particular order, and information about promotional campaigns.

The layout of database system in this platform works by adding the data and saving it for proper implementation. Whenever a product is added to the database, you need to add a title, price, and description to it. Then, this data must be retrieved properly from the EAV model.