Best practices for product attribute configuration

  • For best performance, do not configure more than the maximum recommended number of product attributes or product attribute options.

  • Product attributes—

    • For Adobe Commerce version 2.3.x and 2.4.0 to 2.4.1-p1, configure no more than 500 attributes
    • For Adobe Commerce version 2.4.2 and later, configure up to 1500 product attributes

  • Product attribute options–Configure up to 100 attribute options for each attribute

  • Product attribute sets–Configure a maximum of 1000 attribute sets
    _

NOTE

Product attributes specify features that apply globally to all products. Product attribute options are customizations to specify features that apply to specific products.

Affected products and versions

All supported versions of:

  • Adobe Commerce on cloud infrastructure
  • Adobe Commerce on-premises

Reduce number of product attributes

For best performance when managing products from the Admin and retrieving product data in the storefront:

  • Use different Product templates (attribute sets) for different products.
  • Leverage custom options and complex products for variations management
  • Minimize the number of searchable attributes.
  • Remove product properties that are not used.
  • Store and manage non-commerce related attributes in external product management systems (PMS).

Reduce number product attribute options

For best performance when managing products from the Admin and retrieving product data in the storefront:

  • Use different variation mechanisms to create products: complex products, custom options as a source of product variations.
  • Build specific product templates with targeting attributes and options to avoid generalized product templates and option containers.
  • Maintain a list of actual attribute options.
  • Manage product information through an external Product Management System (PMS).

Reduce number of product attribute sets

Remove unused product attribute sets using MySQL.

Review attribute set configuration

  1. Connect to the site database.

  2. Find the number of attribute sets using MySQL

    SELECT COUNT(*) AS 'attribute_set' FROM *${TABLE_PREFIX}*eav_attribute_set;

  3. Remove any unused attribute sets.

Potential performance impacts

Configuring many product attributes increases the product template size for each product (EAV structure) and the amount of data that must be retrieved. This increase affects operations in the following ways:

  • Increase in SQL queries traffic related to EAV data retrieval and the amount of data processed which results in decreased DB throughput
  • Significant increase in the size of Adobe Commerce indexes and the full-text search index
  • Reaching hard MySQL limits when building a FLAT index for oversized product templates and inability to use it

Increases in product data and index sizes can affect site performance in the following ways:

  • Increased response time for most storefront scenarios related to catalog browsing, search (quick and advanced), and layered navigation.
  • Product management operations in the Admin slow significantly which can lead to timeouts.
  • Product Mass Actions functionality can be blocked.
  • Index re-build time for mid- and large-sized catalogs cannot be performed on a daily basis due to long execution times.

Configuring many attribute options can affect site performance in the following ways:

  • Long request and rendering times on product detail (PDP) and category pages containing complex products.
  • Admin product save operations response time increases above optimal performance targets.
  • Increase in Product Edit form rendering time.
  • Slow checkout.

Additional information

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