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Product
- Product Requirements: Forum Navigation Improvements
- UX Designs (Invision)
Jira Legacy server JIRA (openedx.atlassian.net) serverId 13fd1930-5608-3aac-a5dd-21b934d3a4b4 key TNL-3743
Engineering Docs
| Child pages (Children Display) |
|---|
Notes on past Ruby to Python port status
Current Concerns Regarding Discussions
The following is not meant to replace existing docs above, nor the docs from the Discussions (Forums) Home Page. Below is an attempt to consolidate and summarize some of the more pressing issues.
Discussions Related Product Backlog
Top Issues/Priorities:
- No clear organization or hierarchy
- No unity between inline and course wide discussions
- No way to easily surface interesting content
- No notifications (or UI) to see user's own activity and relevant updates
Useful Docs:
Backlog Spikes:
Performance Issues
Discussion API Performance Testing (by Mobile team)
Timeout errors in the discussion forums for many +5s first-time calls with edx-platform timeout of 5s. More details here.
A current sampling of slow queries:
Getting a thread and counting it’s comments
Getting thread list
Counts are slow to calculate. Existing Production pinned threads of 3000-4000 comments currently time out consistently.
Possibly use cached comment_count to estimate count for large threads
Getting active threads
Getting all threads a user is subscribed to
NoSQL/MongoDB related performance issues may require:
Additional caching
Adjusting functionality (e.g. estimating counts for large threads)
Stored Javascript (like stored procedures), or
Moving to a relational database; used by all major third-party forum solutions
Improved pagination will require some fixes mentioned above
Inexact performance testing (issues surfacing in Production only)
Ruby Maintainability
Uses outdated library for ElasticSearch with no clear upgrade path
Engineers have fear of getting into the Ruby code
Inhibits strategy toward all-Python IDA (if that is the ultimate direction)
Forked XBlock
XBlock required for McKinsey must either be merged or replaced
Other Considerations for Refactor/Replacement
General Maintainability
Minimize future maintenance cost on functionality outside of edX core capabilities (buy vs build?)
Simplify code to use more consistent terminology where possible
Consolidate Discussions related code (separate repo or directory)
Discussions XBlock
Current implementation for McKinsey exists on fork of edX
Estimate: ~4 developer weeks to merge into the platform
XBlock plan and delivery date for edx-platform will determine whether Solutions proceeds with merge of fork
Requires solution in within 6 months (by April/May 2016)
Current UI enhancements due in June 2016
Convert Ruby to Python
Moving out of Ruby will likely require this rewrite, unless we move to a new solution
MongoDB team forked Discussions and moved Ruby code into Django Comment Client
Forked 3 years ago
Dropped Elastisearch and replaced with Mongo search
Dropped separate deployment
Dropped code/functionality they weren’t using
Jim Abramson has a PR from an initial edX attempt at this rewrite
Peer Learning Working Group
Project planned for rewriting Ruby in Python to make it extensible for some Peer Intervention related requirements (Piotr)
IDA Dependencies
Requires standard way to handle Advanced Settings
Requires managing and handling roles (Dave Ormsbee)
User API
What has Jim created for XSeries? Is this just for oAuth?
Integration Points for Third-Party Solutions
Research Data
Does research dump of Discussion data influence refactoring possibilities?
Other Resources
Related edX Architectural Links
- Open Edx Architecture
- Extending edX Platform (Confluence)
- Creating Django based Independently Deployable Applications (IDAs)
- Programs Documentation (IDA under development)
Third-party Forums Resources
- Piazza (used by Berkley Class in edx)
- Django-based Forums Software
- Comparison of Forum Software (Wikipedia)
Rough Draft Architectural Diagram (Future)
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