quintagroup.catalogupdater package is intended for extending ZCatalog API with possiblity to update selected columns only. This package registers ‘catalog_updater’ utility for that.

To simplify usage of the utility, quintagroup.catalogupdater extends GenericSetup’s ZCatalog XMLAdapter handler, which allows to update attribute usage in column tag of catalog.xml file.

So, when you add a new column to the catalog, you add catalog.xml file in some profile with following part:

...
<column value="new_column" />
...

This adds new_column metadata to the portal_catalog, BUT, this metadata will be empty untill you rebuild the catalog. To automate this step you can add ‘update=”True”’ attribute to the tag. And this will lead to column update after adding. Thus, result usage should look like this:

...
<column value="new_column" update="True" />
...

It also supports subtransactions, based on threshold property of ZCatalog.