These are my personal opinions and no way shape or form a criticism of anyone especially the developers.
this premise is not correct. I think we are mixing apples and oranges. Docker itself relies on some sort of multi-tenant (broadly speaking and being generic) architecture. A Docker container cannot run independently, Docker containers need some sort of management system (ie Kubernetes or Swarm) therefor right there you have a "multi-tenant" asset to manage the Docker containers. Another example in a very broad way aren't Tomcat and Apache HTTP, MySQL, MS SQL, etc. "multi-tenant" systems? If you're running a server at the back of your shop, running one instance of OFBiz running your one ecommerce site, yes multi-tenant is perhaps an overkill. On the other hand if a company is running OFBiz for its own multi-company needs or hosting needs of many clients, the costs of running many instances of OFBiz will very quickly become prohibitive. The idea the risks associated with a "multi-tenant" environment is any higher than running a Container environment is also incorrect, whether you're running, multi-tenants, VMs or Docker containers you still need to have some sort of redundancy except it becomes more complex and expensive. If the goal of OFBiz is to serve the needs of QuickBooks (figurative) sized clients, yes it should forgo the burden of its "multi-tenant" architecture, on the other hand if it wants to be a true ERP system, then there are many companies that require a "multi-tenant" architecture. Abandoning OFBiz's "multi-tenant" architecture would go against the trend taken by most major ERP solutions like SAP and MS Dynamics. If anyone wants to run OFBiz as a SaaS solution no way around it, economically speaking you NEED to have "multi-tenancy". For an ERP system a Docker implementation in my opinion is a compromise, and one of the reasons I don't prefer Moqui. I personally think OFBiz's mutli-tenancy does not go far enough, for example I think the Login into OFBiz should be more aware of its tenants, and not require a Tenant ID. Again very, very, very broadly speaking Google, Amazon, Microsoft (i.e. Azure) Facebook, IBM (i.e Watson cognitive analytics) and many others are all able to track the last time you said hello to your special friend and recommend you step into the closest flower shop by running some sort of monolithic natured multi-tenant software. Carlos -----Original Message----- From: Paul Mandeltort [mailto:p...@marcospec.com] Sent: Friday, September 7, 2018 1:27 PM To: user@ofbiz.apache.org Subject: Re: Should we keep the multi-tenants feature in OFBiz? I agree we should pursue making containerization a first-class citizen in the OFBiz world. It will hasten adoption, reduce development startup headaches, and leverage the multi-billion dollar investments that companies like Docker and Amazon have been making in the space. Caveat: I’m not fully knowledgeable of the detailed implementation of the multi-tenant functionality, but it appears it was developed before containerization technology hit it stride. Modern web architecture design is container-oriented- spin up and down containers (which could be configured as tenants) as needed. With postgres database hosting platforms like Amazon Aurora enabling instant spin-up of any database size, it would make better architecture sense to publish an official OFBiz docker container architecture which would implement the multi-tenant functionality and push down the different tenant configs via configuration files/docker images. Then the entire deployment of a multi-tenant system can be managed at the dockerfile/composer level in source code control. Moving in this direction makes ofbiz directly compatible with modern hosting platforms and makes it super easy to deploy and manage, and also leverages the large devops community that’s already built around this use case for monitoring, scaling, backup, protection, and all the other day-to-day production headaches that come with managing scaled web application. The multi-tenant approach prolongs the monolithic nature of OFbiz which eventually slows down and cripples development as changes and upgrades become exponentially more difficult. —P > On Sep 2, 2018, at 03:33, Jacques Le Roux <jacques.le.r...@les7arts.com> > wrote: > > Hi, > > Note: this conversation started on the dev ML: > https://markmail.org/message/hb2kt5nkodhwnkgw > > The multi-tenants feature in OFBiz only allows a dozens or maybe even few > hundreds tenants, after it begin to be a lot of DBs! > I faced that with a startup which wanted to handle thousands, if not millions > (actually they failed), of tenants, obviously OFBiz can't do that. > > I don't break any secret to say that I was working with David (and Andrew) on > a project in 2010 when David had to quickly answer to the client's demand who > wanted to have tenants. David brilliantly and quickly delivered, but it was > only a start. > > After many improvements, this feature still have some issues > https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/OFBIZ-6066 > https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/OFBIZ-7900 > https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/OFBIZ-6164 > https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/OFBIZ-6065 > > Also this is somehow related > https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/OFBIZ-6712 > > And most importantly > https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/OFBIZ-7112 > https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/OFBIZ-7754 > > I recently read this article > > https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/architecture-constraints-end-multi-tenancy-gregor-hohpe/ > > and, after my experiences with multi-tenant as is in OFBiz, it made me wonder > if we should not think about how it's done now in OFBiz in 2018 with the > clouds being everywhere! > > Before sending this email, I quickly exchanged with David about how Moqui > handles that now. And we are on the same page, see > > https://www.linkedin.com/groups/4640689/4640689-6180851287941201924 > > https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41952818/does-moqui-framework-2-0-still-support-mutli-tenency?rq=1 > [1] > > [1] Initially David gave me this link > > https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/multi-instance-moqui-docker-david-e-jones/ > > but it seems LinkedIn has lost it, as said in the stackoverflow comment. > > So IMO why not deprecating the multi-tenants as is now and rather push a > multi-instances way? > > Opinions? > > Jacques > --- This email has been checked for viruses by AVG. https://www.avg.com
