The Digital Press

A developer shares their deep dive into implementing a "one database per tenant" multitenancy pattern using SQLite with Rails, highlighting the challenges and a practical middleware solution. The article explores Rails' evolving connection management and why SQLite is uniquely suited for managing many small tenant databases.

Why it matters: Proper multitenancy with one database per tenant enhances data isolation, simpler backups, and more granular control in multi-user web apps.

The big picture: Rails’ ActiveRecord wasn’t originally designed for dynamic, runtime database switching, making multitenancy complex but increasingly manageable with recent features.

The stakes: Without correct connection handling, apps face frequent connection errors and degraded performance under load, especially during scaling or upgrades.

Commenters say: Readers appreciate the clear explanation and middleware solution; some note similar patterns in production, while others discuss trade-offs like migration complexity and cross-tenant analytics challenges.