Tldr; Since 0.12 you don't need to spin up 2 containers for the basic stuff, just get the Database up as you would. Half the containers twice the features, or the same features w/e.

The Database

If you played around with Conduit a little, and when I see a little I mean even just running our handy "getting started" script, you'll know that the Database is an absolutely important module of the platform. You can't do anything(pretty much) without the Database module being online and connected to either MongoDB or one of the supported SQL databases.

That's for good reason of course. We don't think that any kind of backend(or at least one with an API) can exist without a datasource and the most prominent datasources are databases. So Conduit uses its database to manage the state of the platform, the configuration, the schemas you create and obviously your data. Once it's up and running, you're in business.

The Database handles a lot of stuff, since it's the single point where all data is retrieved from or updated. It keeps track of all the schemas you create (either through code or the admin UI), it fetches and updates data for those schemas, handles permissions (on a module level) and provides a handy adapter layer so that you can write the same queries both for MongoDB and SQL (which was tough to do so we hope you like it).

And then we have the CMS

As you're probably aware, the CMS is another important part of a backend, yes not every backend, but it tends to be very useful when you have an API serving an application or maybe using it as a headless CMS for your website. In the context of Conduit, it definitely fills that role, but also does a bunch of other cool stuff.

For example, you create new schemas through it so that you can store any data you want, you add and manipulate data (duh), it automatically creates CRUD endpoints for you so that you don't have to, and lastly it provides you with the ability to write custom logic (up to a point of course) which again is exposed through automatically generated endpoints.

So yeah, it's not actually just a CMS, it does a bunch of stuff.

Sudden moment of wisdom

Since you probably didn't go around looking at our entire version history, Conduit was originally developed as a monolith. A single chunk of code, that was of course broken up in different node modules, which we quickly realized that it wasn't going to work. We'd be losing the ability to pick and choose which code we're actually running, linear scaling of services and of course the maintenance cost would be somewhat bigger. I say somewhat since node modules provide a nice enough separation that helps a bit.

So we decided to break the thing apart into separate modules, for a bunch of reasons that it'd probably be best to read the architecture section of the docs than me claiming more of your time to discuss it. We were perhaps a bit too greedy, in this break-up process, as we all know break-ups are never easy (come back Maria I still miss you). We wrote CMS and Database as separate modules, for the sake of linear scaling and blah blah.

Until we realized, that there wasn't any reason whatsoever for them to actually be separate modules. The CMS does 99.9% of its work on the database, it "just" constructs queries. The only other logic that it has, is centered around configuration and modification of schemas which is minimal, unless your use-case is to have a monke army modifying schemas every 100ms, where yes, you would need a separate module to handle the load.

The Merging

While the section title seems to derive from part 3 of an unnamed sci-fi book, it was a fairly trivial process. We pretty much took the code and started copy/pasting in the Database.....aaaaand it broke. We had to make various changes here and there, and *pooof* magic happened and they are now one module. All urls that were "/content" or "/cms" have now been changed to "/database", but you don't have to take my word for it. Spin up Conduit and check your trusted Swagger file.

The Future

This was a big change for Conduit, since it simplified the state of affairs that concerned the Database and the CMS, while also reducing the number of running containers you need to get the job done. We're also considering to merge sms, email and push into a single module, so that we can provide more awesome features. But these ones are actually different modules with no interconnection whatsoever. You can provide your opinion [here](https://github.com/ConduitPlatform/Conduit/issues/23) for that matter.

Looking forward though we have more awesome stuff planned for the Database like:

• Migration support for schemas
• Access control mechanics
• Index support and management
• Database introspection so that you can use existing dbs (see issue)

If you've managed to get this far, thanks! And check out the links below:

• 🌟 Give us a star here: https://github.com/ConduitPlatform/Conduit
• 👋 Wanna say hi? Drop a mail here: [email protected]
• ✨ Join our discord: https://discord.gg/fBqUQ23M7g