Liferay, ServiceBuilder, what's the scope for attributes userId, companyId, userId

Question

Although I've developed some services with Liferay ServiceBuilder, I'm not quite sure I understand the point of using the attributes:

1. userId
2. companyId
3. groupId Note that these attributes are available through the PortalRequest.

Following the basic tutorials, you are instructed to create these attributes for every entity, and take care to set them on 'add' functions. But thinking of it, I've not ever seen any tutorial or referenced code where these attributes are used on data retrieval (Finder methods, dynamic queries, or custom queries either)

So what's the point on keeping this information ?

1. Are these attributes used automatically somehow under some convention or scope ? Something like, the Liferay's default Finders using them when they are available through the PortalRequest ?

2. Or is it up to the developer to use them on every Select, E.g. are all the single-parameter Finders practically useless on multi-instance Portals (since the companyId attribute should be used on every Finder method) ?

3. Or is it just a good practice to keep this structure for database extendability, auditing, indexing or something else I'm totally missing ?

Answer 1

These attributes are necessary when you use your entities for example on staging environment. The groupId specifies to which environment the entity belongs to. Meaning of userId is obvious and as for companyId it is the site identifier. So IMHO these attributes are quite important when you have multiple sites on one portal, when you have staging env. enabled etc..

Answer 2

Suppose you have a new table and you want to set UserId in your table then it is necessary but otherwise I don't think these attributes are neccessary. I have created service builder

<entity name="FaoEsalesCustomer" local-service="true" remote-service="false" table="fao_esalecustomer">
    <!-- PK fields -->
    <column name="esaleCustomerId" type="long" primary="true" />
    <!-- Audit fields -->
    <column name="createdBy" type="long" />
    <column name="createdOn" type="Date" />
    <column name="modifiedBy" type="long" />
    <column name="modifiedOn" type="Date" />        
    <!-- Other fields -->
    <column name="customerName" type="String" />
    <column name="address" type="String" />
    <column name="ph" type="Integer" />
    <column name="categoryId" type="long" />
    <column name="categoryName" type="String" />
    <column name="quantity" type="Double" />
    <column name="price" type="Double" />
</entity>