Split modulestore persists data in three MongoDB "collections": course_index (list of courses and the current version of each), structure (outline of the courses, and some XBlock fields), and definition (other XBlock fields). While "structure" and "definition" data can get very large, which is one of the reasons MongoDB was chosen for modulestore, the course index data is very small. By moving course index data to MySQL / a django model, we get these advantages: * Full history of changes to the course index data is now preserved * Includes a django admin view to inspect the list of courses and libraries * It's much easier to "reset" a corrupted course to a known working state, by using the simple-history revert tools from the django admin. * The remaining MongoDB collections (structure and definition) are essentially just used as key-value stores of large JSON data structures. This paves the way for future changes that allow migrating courses one at a time from MongoDB to S3, and thus eliminating any use of MongoDB by split modulestore, simplifying the stack.
Open edX -------- This is the root package for Open edX. The intent is that all importable code from Open edX will eventually live here, including the code in the lms, cms, and common directories. If you're adding a new Django app, place it in core/djangoapps. If you're adding utilities that require Django, place them in core/djangolib. If you're adding code that defines no Django models or views of its own but is widely useful, put it in core/lib. Note: All new code should be created in this package, and the legacy code will be moved here gradually. For now the code is not structured like this, and hence legacy code will continue to live in a number of different packages.