Building a multi-tenancy application

[Gabriël]

Hi,

Can anyone point me to a article of product about using an application
hosted on a webserver for multiple customers? So everything is the same
except for the connection string each customer runs with, which gets
loaded upon logon.

My situation is a following:
- 1 set of code which can interact with the database
- 1 SQL Server instance with multiple Databases (1 per customer)
- 1 File Storage Folder with a folder in which a structue for each
client resides

Is this a keepable structure in performance? Are there better "best
practices"?

Any comments will be appericiated!

Greets,
Gab

[Jonathan Broadus]

On Sat, 21 Jan 2006 12:24:56 +0100, "Gabriël@Home" wrote:

Hi,

Can anyone point me to a article of product about using an application
hosted on a webserver for multiple customers? So everything is the same
except for the connection string each customer runs with, which gets
loaded upon logon.

My situation is a following:
- 1 set of code which can interact with the database
- 1 SQL Server instance with multiple Databases (1 per customer)
- 1 File Storage Folder with a folder in which a structue for each
client resides

Is this a keepable structure in performance? Are there better "best
practices"?

Any comments will be appericiated!

Greets,
Gab

Gab,

Is there a reason, such as giving customers access to the database, that
you need a separate database instance for each customer?

In an "Application Service Provider" situation, such as what you're
describing, it's typical to have a database table which lists customers,
and use the KeyID from this table on all other tables, to identify the
records that belong to each customer.

When a customer logs in, you store the ID for them, and can then store all
data in a single set of tables, using the CustomerKey as a part of your
where clauses to be sure you only retrieve data for that one customer.

Does this answer what you're looking for?

Jonathan

[Gabriël]

Jonathan Broadus wrote:

On Sat, 21 Jan 2006 12:24:56 +0100, "Gabriël@Home" wrote:

Hi,

Can anyone point me to a article of product about using an application
hosted on a webserver for multiple customers? So everything is the same
except for the connection string each customer runs with, which gets
loaded upon logon.

My situation is a following:
- 1 set of code which can interact with the database
- 1 SQL Server instance with multiple Databases (1 per customer)
- 1 File Storage Folder with a folder in which a structue for each
client resides

Is this a keepable structure in performance? Are there better "best
practices"?

Any comments will be appericiated!

Greets,
Gab

Gab,

Is there a reason, such as giving customers access to the database, that
you need a separate database instance for each customer?

In an "Application Service Provider" situation, such as what you're
describing, it's typical to have a database table which lists customers,
and use the KeyID from this table on all other tables, to identify the
records that belong to each customer.

When a customer logs in, you store the ID for them, and can then store all
data in a single set of tables, using the CustomerKey as a part of your
where clauses to be sure you only retrieve data for that one customer.

Does this answer what you're looking for?

Jonathan

Thanks for the answer!

I think it's a bit of an answer I was looking for. But are there reasons
why you should have multiple databases (I can sync there structure
within seconds) on 1 sql server?

Thanks,
Gab