Runtime evolution of service-based multi-tenant SaaS applications

Abstract

The Single-Instance Multi-Tenancy (SIMT) model for service delivery enables a SaaS provider to achieve economies of scale via the reuse and runtime sharing of software assets between tenants. However, evolving such an application at runtime to cope with the changing requirements from its different stakeholders is challenging. In this paper, we propose an approach to evolving service-based SIMT SaaS applications that are developed based on Dynamic Software Product Lines (DSPL) with runtime sharing and variation among tenants. We first identify the different kinds of changes to a service-based SaaS application, and the consequential impacts of those changes. We then discuss how to realize and manage each change and its resultant impacts in the DSPL. A software engineer declaratively specifies changes in a script, and realizes the changes to the runtime model of the DSPL using the script. We demonstrate the feasibility of our approach with a case study. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.