Abstract
In order to serve a lot of different customers in a SaaS environment, software vendors have to comply to a range of different varying requirements in their software product. Because of these varying requirements and the large number of customers, a variable multi-tenant solution is needed to achieve this goal. This paper gives a pragmatic approach to the concepts of multi-tenancy and variability in SaaS environments and proposes three architectural patterns that support variability in multi-tenant SaaS environments. The Customizable Data Views pattern, the Module Dependent Menu pattern and the Pre/Post Update Hooks pattern are explained and shown as good practices for applying variability in a multi-tenant SaaS environment. All patterns are based on case studies performed at two large software vendors in the Netherlands who are offering an ERP software product as a service.
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Kabbedijk, J., Jansen, S. (2011). Variability in Multi-tenant Environments: Architectural Design Patterns from Industry. In: De Troyer, O., Bauzer Medeiros, C., Billen, R., Hallot, P., Simitsis, A., Van Mingroot, H. (eds) Advances in Conceptual Modeling. Recent Developments and New Directions. ER 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6999. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-24574-9_20
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-24574-9_20
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