Single-Tenancy Application
The steps that lead from a user entering a website address in his browser to viewing the content are fairly straightforward. The browser sends a request for the content at that address to a server. The server receives the request, matches the address with an application, and passes the request on to that application for processing. The application reads the request, creates a response, and passes the response back to the server. The server returns the response to the browser and the browser presents the response content to the user. This is sometimes referred to as a single tenant application architecture. Each client application is matched with a single IP address and host name so that, as requests come in, the server can route them to the appropriate application (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Single tenant application architecture.
Multi-Tenancy Application
In a multitenant architecture the steps leading from the request to the response are slightly different. The browser sends the request to the server. But this time, instead of the server matching the requested address with the client application instance, the server routes the request to a single instance of the application. The application reads the request to determine which client the response is for and generates the appropriate response before passing it back to the server. The rest of the work flow proceeds as normal. The server returns the response and the browser presents the response content (Figure 2).
Figure 2: Multitenant application architecture.