We are working on an application in CakePHP that will be used by multiple companies. We want to ensure performance, scalability, code manageability and security for our application.
Our current beta version creates a new database for each customer. When a new company joins the site we run a SQL script to create a blank database.
This has the following advantages:
– Better security (companies users are separated from each other)
– We can set the database via the subdomain (IE: monkey.site.com, uses the site_monkey database)
– Single code base.
– Performance for SQL queries is generally quite good as data is split across smaller databases.
Now unfortunately this has many disadvantages
– Manageability: changes to database have to happen across all existing databases
– The SQL script method of creation is clunky and not as reliable as we would like
– We want to allow users to login from the home page (EG. http://www.site.com) but we cant currently do this as the subdomain determines what database to use.
– We would like a central place to keep metrics/customer usage.
So we are torn/undecided as to what is the best solution to our database structure for our application.
Currently we see three options:
– Keep multiple database design
– Merge all companies into one DB and identify each by a ‘companyId’
– Some kind of split model, where certain tables are in a ‘core database’ and others are in a customer specific database.
Can you guys offer some of your precious advise on how you think we should best do this?
Any feedback / info would be greatly appreciated.
Many thanks,
kSeudo
Just my suggestion:
I think better you keep the customer related data in different databases and authentication related data in a common database So when a user logs in you should have an entry with domain that user belongs to and redirect to that domain and access the corresponding database and data.
Again your concern of changes to the database, You need to implement the changes in each databases separately. I think there is some advantages to this also. Some customers may ask for few changes according to their process. So this can be easily managed if you are keeping separate databases for different customers.