Getting Started - eXist: A NoSQL Database and Application Development Platform - page 28

/db/system
This is where eXist stores important configuration information (e.g., about users,
groups, and versioning). You shouldn't change any of this information by hand
or programmatically, with the exception of what's inside /db/system/config.
/db/system/config
This collection is used to store the collection-specific configuration for eXist, like
validation, indexes, and triggers. If you look underneath, you'll find a (partial)
copy of the existing database structure with collection.xconf files here and there.
These (XML) files contain the collection configuration. Read more about this in
“Implicit Validation” on page 246 and “Configuring Indexes” on page 275 .
/db/apps/*
These are the root collections for the packages, installed during installation and
manually later. Underneath these is their code and data. If you're ever going to
write applications yourself ( Chapter 9 ), you'll create your own subcollections
here.
What's on Your Disk
Now let's look at some interesting and/or important locations on your disk for eXist.
There are rumors on the grapevine that the basic file structure will
change in future versions, so be aware if you use this topic with a
later version than 2.1.
$EXIST_HOME/
This is eXist's home directory.
$EXIST_HOME/conf.xml
This is eXist's main configuration file. If you peek inside (it's well documented),
you'll find entries for, for instance, all kinds of default behavior, the location of
the database (in db-connection/@files ), cache sizes, the indexer, and the built-in
XQuery modules.
$EXIST_HOME/tools/jetty/etc/jetty.xml
This is the Jetty web server's configuration file (eXist uses Jetty to communicate
with the world). There are several interesting things you might want to change
using this file, like the TCP port numbers and the default URL prefix exist/ .
$EXIST_HOME/webapp/WEB-INF/
This location defines the eXist web application. It holds several important config‐
uration files and is the default base location for the database and the logfiles.