Combining Different Multi-tenancy Patterns in Service-Oriented Applications

Abstract

Software as a service (SaaS) providers exploit economies of scale by offering the same instance of an application to multiple customers typically in a single-instance multi-tenant architecture model. Therefore the applications must be scalable, multi-tenant aware and configurable. In this paper we show how the services in a service-oriented SaaS application can be deployed using different multi-tenancy patterns. We describe how the chosen patterns influence the customizability,multi-tenant awareness and scalability of the application. Using the patterns we describe how individual services in a multi-tenant aware application can be not multi-tenant aware while maintaining the overall multi-tenant awareness of the application.We show based on a real-world example how the pattern scan be used in practice and show how existing applications already use these patterns.