Question

I looked through the file Mage/Catalog/sql/catalog_setup/install-1.6.0.0.php.

The part of code:

$installer = $this;
/* @var $installer Mage_Catalog_Model_Resource_Setup */

$installer->startSetup();

/**
 * Create table 'catalog/product'
 */
$table = $installer->getConnection()
    ->newTable($installer->getTable('catalog/product'))
    ->addColumn('entity_id', Varien_Db_Ddl_Table::TYPE_INTEGER, null, array(
        'identity'  => true,
        'unsigned'  => true,
        'nullable'  => false,
        'primary'   => true,
        ), 'Entity ID')

You can see here catalog_product implementation: $installer->getTable(‘catalog/product’).
But I couldn’t find this table in DB.
How does it work then? I always thought that catalog/product = catalog_product.

Answer 1

The following function

getTable('catalog/product')

can be traced back to

app/code/core/Mage/Core/Model/Resource.php

checking the public function getTableName($modelEntity) you will see that the logic treats also resource table names:

<catalog_resource>
            <class>Mage_Catalog_Model_Resource</class>
            <deprecatedNode>catalog_resource_eav_mysql4</deprecatedNode>
            <entities>
                <product>
                    <table>catalog_product_entity</table>
                </product>

more resources about this:
Magento ORM: Entity Attribute Value; Part 1 and
Magento Setup Resources from Alan Storm