Question

I’d like to design a cloud business solution with 4 default tables, a user may add a custom field(Column?) or a add a custom object(Table?).

My first thought was to create a new database for each account but there’s a limit to database number on a sql server instance,

2nd solution : for each account create a new schema by duplicating the 4 default tables for each schema.

3rd solution : create 4 unique tables with a discriminant column (ACCOUNT_ID), if a user wants a new field add a join table dedictated to that ACCOUNT_ID, if he wants a new object then create a new table.

What are your thoughts? Does any body know how existing cloud solutions store data? (for instance salesforce)

BTW, I don’t want to create a VM for each account.

Answer 1

Thanks all for your suggestions, that helped me a lot especially the microsoft article suggested by John.

Since few architectural points are shared between accounts (the 4 default tables are just a suggestion for the user, I expect a full customization), I’ve opted for the schema per account design with no EAV pattern.