I'm about to create my first cloud based app using PHP and MYSQL. I'm in a limbo and can't seem to figure out whether I should use one database which stores everything, or should I setup a dedicated database for each user that signs up to my service.
The application itself will be recording hundreds and thousands of records on daily basis. So having a one big shared database could get heavy. It could also lead to performance issues when querying the database. On the other hand, having a dedicated database for each user could potentially lead to maintenance problems (E.g backing up and keeping track of each database instance).
Could anyone please advise me on the best approach? Or is there a better way of doing this?
Related
For a project we are working with an several external partner. For the project we need access to their MySQL database. The problem is, they cant do that. Their databse is hosted in a managed environment where they don't have much configuration possibilities. And they dont want do give us access to all of their data. So the solution they came up with, is the federated storage engine.
We now have one table for each table of their database. The problem is, the amount of data we get is huge and will even increase in the future. That means there are a lot of inserts performed on our database. The optimal solution for us would be to intercept all incoming MySQL traffic, process it and then store it in bulk. We also thought about using someting like redis to store the data.
Additionnaly, we plan to get more data from different partners. They will potentialy provide us the data in different ways. So using redis would allow us, to have all our data in one place.
Copying the data to redis after its stored in the mysql database is not an option. We just cant handle that many inserts and we need the data as fast as possible.
TL;DR
is there a way to pretend to be a MySQL server so we can directly process data received via the federated storage engine?
We also thought about using the blackhole engine in combination with binary logging on our side. So incoming data would only be written to the binary log and wouldn't be stored in the database. But then performance would still be limited by Disk I/O.
Little question, I'm developing a saas software (erp).
I designed it with 1 database per account for these reasons :
I make a lot of personalisation, and need to add specific table columns for each account.
Easier to manage db backup (and reload data !)
Less risky : sometimes I need to run SQL queries on a table, in case of an error with bad query (update / delete...), only one customer is affected instead of all of them.
Bas point : I'm turning to have hundreds of databases...
I'm hiring a company to manage my servers, and they said that it's better to have only one database, with a few tables, and put all data in the same tables with column as id_account. I'm very very surprised by these words, so I'm wondering... what are your ideas ?
Thanks !
Frederic
The current environment I am working in, we handle millions of records from numerous clients. Our solution is to use Schema to segregate each individual client. A schema allows you to partition your clients into separate virtual databases while inside a single db. Each schema will have an exact copy of the tables from your application.
The upside:
Segregated client data
data from a single client can be easily backed up, exported or deleted
Programming is still the same, but you have to select the schema before db calls
Moving clients to another db or standalone server is a lot easier
adding specific tables per client is easier (see below)
single instance of the database running
tuning the db affects all tenants
The downside:
Unless you manage your shared schema properly, you may duplicate data
Migrations are repeated for every schema
You have to remember to select the schema before db calls
hard pressed to add many negatives... I guess I may be biased.
Adding Specific Tables: Why would you add client specific tables if this is SAAS and not custom software? Better to use a Postgres DB with a Hstore field and store as much searchable data as you like.
Schemas are ideal for multi-tenant databases Link Link
A lot of what I am telling you depends on your software stack, the capabilities of your developers and the backend db you selected (all of which you neglected to mention)
Your hardware guys should not decide your software architecture. If they do, you are likely shooting yourself in the leg before you even get out of the gate. Get a good senior software architect, the grief they will save you, will likely save your business.
I hope this helps...
Bonne Chance
I'll be soon developing a big cms where users can configure their website managing news, products, services and much more about their company.
Think about a shopify without the ecommerce part (at least for now).
The rdbms is MySQL and the user base will be about 150 (maybe bigger).
I'm trying to figure out which one of these two approaches would fit better.
DEDICATED DATABASE FOR EACH USER
PROS:
performance (and possible future sharding?): is querying smaller database with just your data better than querying a giant database with every user data?
easy "export my data" for users: I can simply dump their own db without fetching everything and putting it in some big encoded logical datastruct
SINGLE DATABASE FOR EVERY USER
PROS:
less general overhead
statistic: just one db to query to get and aggregate whatever I need
backup: one dump (not sure about this one because I've no experience in cluster dumping)
Which way would you go for? I don't think shopify created a dedicated database for any user registered... or maybe they did?
I'd like more experienced people than me to help me figuring out the best way and all the variables I can not guess right now because of my ignorance.
It sounds like you're developing a software-as-a-service hosted system, rather than a software package to distribute to customers for them to run on their own servers. In that case, in general, you will have an easier time developing and administering your service if you design it for a single database handling multiple users.
You'll be able to add new users to your system with data manipulation language (DML) rather than data definition language (DDL). That is, you'll insert rows for new users rather than create tables. That will make your life a LOT easier when you go live.
You are absolutely right that stuff like backups and aggregate reporting will be far easier if you have a single shared database.
Don't worry too much about the user data export functions. You'll have to develop software for those functions anyway; it won't be that hard to filter by user when you do the export.
But there's a downside you should consider to the single-database approach: if part of your requirement is to conceal various users' existence or data from each other, you'll have to be very careful to do this in your development. Will your users be competitors with each other? That could be tricky. You'll need to trust your in-house admin and support teams to refrain from disclosing one user's data to another by mistake (or deliberately). With a separate database per user, you'll have a smaller risk in that area.
150 users aren't many. Don't worry about scalability until you have a workload of paying customers. When that happens you can add MySQL server RAM, partitions, solid-state disks, replication, memcached, sharding, and all that other expensive and high-workload stuff. If you add those things before you go live, you'll just take longer and blow more money before you go live. Not good.
I have an application which is going to be distributed to a hosting platform, most probably phpfog.
It is very similar to how WordPress.com operates, where each customer can host their own individual installation of the app on our servers. We host the 'work' files and provide the database (However, it is NOT WordPress; it's a custom app).
Each user of the application has their own separate MySQL database.
I am wondering what the most cost-effective service would be to provide this. It seems that most cloud services offer, for instance, one massive 50GB database. It is definitely conceivable that instead of an individual database, we have one huge one and prefix all the tables per user. But that seems really bloated and unwieldy. It's also not really possible without major structural changes to have one big database for everyone (And the same tables inside it for everyone) as the app is primarily designed to be standalone.
Each database really won't get that big. We are talking low GB - I'd suggest the biggest would be 5GB. However, there will be a LOT of them as obviously it's one per customer.
What would be the most cost- and performance-effective way of handling this?
Amazon RDS in fact provides a database server rather than an individual sales page; I misunderstood their offerings.
In this case, RDS is a drop-in replacement for existing MySQL databases and will work perfectly.
So, I have an existing db with some tables for a class of users. We're building a more general app to handle multiple things the company does and this class of users, call them hosts, is a general type used by multiple programs in our company. We want to (eventually) migrate into a centralized app as now we have several. However, we don't have the time to do it completely right now. I need to build a login system for these hosts and I'd like to begin to migrate to this new system with that. I can't figure out a reasonable way to move those tables that are in the legacy DB to the new DB, which (of course) resides on a different server, with out wanting to stab my own eyes out after 30 seconds of having to deal with this. The legacy db has many reports the rely on joining on the current hosts tables.
The only things I can come up with don't seem like very good ideas. Those being, writing to both dbs from both apps (pointless data duplication prone to syncing problems), provide an API from the new app and mash the data coming back together with record sets (just seems... wrong).
Anyone have any ideas how to deal with this?
It has it's limitations, but the FEDERATED storage engine might be of assistance.