Exercise 3: What HPOS Actually Changes — Possible Solution
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WHAT CHANGES UNDER HPOS
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Per this chapter, High-Performance Order Storage moves order data out
of wp_posts and wp_postmeta entirely and into dedicated tables built
specifically for it (wp_wc_orders and related tables), rather than
storing each order as a post with post_type = 'shop_order' the way
older WooCommerce versions did. Available since WooCommerce 8.2
(2023), and the default for new stores since 8.5+.

WHY IT'S CALLED "THE ONE DELIBERATE, DOCUMENTED EXCEPTION"
------------------------------
Per this chapter, every other kind of WooCommerce data - products,
their titles, descriptions, prices, SKUs, stock levels - follows the
same posts/postmeta pattern as any other WordPress custom post type,
with no special-casing. Orders are the one category of data
WooCommerce deliberately moved to purpose-built tables, and it did so
for a stated, practical reason: performance, since a busy store's
order history has query patterns (searching, filtering, reporting)
that the general-purpose posts/postmeta structure doesn't serve as
well at scale.

WHY THIS WORKS AS AN ANSWER
------------------------------
It correctly identifies what HPOS actually moves and where it moves
it to, correctly dates when it became available and when it became
default, and explains why this chapter singles orders out specifically
as the one place WooCommerce's storage model deliberately departs from
the posts/postmeta pattern used everywhere else.