cache_default_attribute causing issues? What actually is it for?

[haylau]

I noticed a really weird thing on our category pages, sometimes the price is not shown. It is always the same products, and obviously they do have a price. Once you click through in to the product page the price is shown. I have compared EVERY setting of these products and the settings are identical. Also if I change price, QTY etc then the problem persists

 

So I started checking the tables to see if there were any flags that may be affecting products

 

And I stumbled upon two settings 

 

In ps_produc_shop there is a field called cache_default_attribute 

and in 

ps_product there is also a field called cache_default_attribute

There is an entry in the fields that do not show the price. If i remove the value then the price is shown again

So the question is what are these fields? are they needed? am I safe deleted the contents of those fields?

Edited June 11, 2021 by haylau

[haylau]

Found this elsewhere

Quote

PS 1.6.1.5, after some combinations were deleted cache_default_attribute was filled with obsolete reference, once following (as stated in one of previous posts above) was executed problem went away:

UPDATE ps_product SET cache_default_attribute = 0;
UPDATE ps_product_shop SET cache_default_attribute = 0;

Seems to have worked, the result told me 100 products were affected. Not sure what this has done, or why, but seems to have worked