[Bug or Feature?] url_path attribute value is not populated for any product

[MagePsycho]

Preconditions

1. Magento CE 2.1.1
2. PHP 5.6
3. Nginx 1.9

Steps to reproduce

1. Try to save(new or existing) any product
2. Go to MySQL client and check for url_path value for that product as:
   SELECT * FROM catalog_product_entity_varchar WHERE attribute_id IN ( SELECT attribute_id FROM eav_attribute WHERE attribute_code IN ('url_path') AND entity_type_id = 4 ) AND entity_id = <product_id>
3. There won't be any result.
   In fact there is no any value at all on product level for url_path.

Expected result

1. In such case, url_path value should look like [product-url-key][product-suffix-from-setting]

Actual result

1. Empty value for url_path for any product

Queries:

• is this a bug or feature?
• If it's a feature any reason behind not populating the url_path value for products?
• is it safe to delete all the url_path values for migrated products?

[veloraven]

@MagePsycho thank you for your report.
Please report EE issues via the Support portal of your account or Partner portal if you are a partner reporting on behalf of a merchant.
Github is intended for Community edition reports given no account management for CE users. This will allow for proper tracking of issues at the account level.

[MagePsycho]

@veloraven This is happening for both CE & EE.

[garfix]

It is important to notice that starting to use a url_path for products will have an important performance penalty.

Currently it is already the case that when the url_key of a parent category changes, this affects the url_paths of all child categories. And the url_rewrite entries for these categories.

If a url_path for products is the be kept current, it will be the case that when the url_key of a parent category changes, this affects the url_paths of all both child categories and child products, recursively. This in turn will have an effect on all their url_rewrite table entries.

[keyurshah070]

Started Investigating @okobchenko @ishakhsuvarov