From isolated tenancy hosted application to multi-tenancy: Toward a systematic migration method for web application

Software as a Service (SaaS) attracts small and medium enterprises by its low investment, flexibility and easy to manage. Migrating isolated tenancy hosted web application toward SaaS application can reuse the legacy software assets and cut down the re-development cost and risk. Since multi-tenant is a prime characteristic of SaaS, migrating to multi-tenancy is the prerequisite step of migrating to SaaS. However, it is a hard task complicated by the lack of appropriate migration approaches and tools. In this paper, a systematic method is proposed to migrate and evolve isolated tenancy hosted applications into multi-tenant enabled applications from aspects of data model, access control and tenant management, taking into account both the business needs and technical contents. An experiment has been conducted to tune the approach and evaluate applicability and performance impact of our migration method.

[1]  Bo Gao,et al.  A Framework for Native Multi-Tenancy Application Development and Management , 2007, The 9th IEEE International Conference on E-Commerce Technology and The 4th IEEE International Conference on Enterprise Computing, E-Commerce and E-Services (CEC-EEE 2007).

[2]  Norihiko Sakamoto.  Construction of SaaS-Based e-Learning System in Japan , 2009 .

[3]  Liam O'Brien,et al.  Service-Oriented Migration and Reuse Technique (SMART) , 2005, 13th IEEE International Workshop on Software Technology and Engineering Practice (STEP'05).

[4]  Harry M. Sneed,et al.  Integrating legacy software into a service oriented architecture , 2006, Conference on Software Maintenance and Reengineering (CSMR'06).

[5]  Thomas Kwok,et al.  A Software as a Service with Multi-tenancy Support for an Electronic Contract Management Application , 2008, 2008 IEEE International Conference on Services Computing.

[6]  Nicola Vitiello,et al.  A Strategy and an Eclipse Based Environment for the Migration of Legacy Systems to Multi-tier Web-based Architectures , 2006, 2006 22nd IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance.

[7]  Aniello Cimitile,et al.  Migrating legacy systems to the Web: an experience report , 2001, Proceedings Fifth European Conference on Software Maintenance and Reengineering.