Introduction As I explained in this article, multitenancy is an architectural pattern which allows you to isolate customers even if they are using the same hardware or software components. There are multiple ways you can achieve multitenancy, and in this article, we are going to see how you can implement a multitenancy architecture using the … Continue reading Hibernate database catalog multitenancy →

The post Hibernate database catalog multitenancy appeared first on Vlad Mihalcea.

Introduction In software terminology, multitenancy is an architectural pattern which allows you to isolate customers even if they are using the same hardware or software components. Multitenancy has become even more attractive with the widespread adoption of cloud computing. A relational database system provides a hierarchy structure of objects which, typically, looks like this: catalog … Continue reading A beginner’s guide to database multitenancy →

The post A beginner’s guide to database multitenancy appeared first on Vlad Mihalcea.

A lot of times I’ve found the need to create a “Shop” page that shows the root category as an anchor (with layered navigation, for example). There are also a couple questions floating around on Stackexchange about how to have root categories be shown like normal categories.

By default Magento won’t show the root category for reasons I’ve still not found out.

There are a lot of modules that have that functionality, like Amasty’s Improved Navigation. However, it turns out it’s also pretty easy to do yourself.

In the Mage_Catalog_CategoryController::_initCatagory (yes, it’s spelled wrong) there is the following check:

if (!Mage::helper('catalog/category')->canShow($category)) {
        return false;
}

The canShow method …

There are at least three issues with the catalog URL rewrite indexer and URL rewrite management in Magento:

• A reindex will add a new rows for products with duplicate url_key's - every single time you reindex
• Disabled products generate new rows
• Products that are not-visible individually generate new rows

Core bug

I’m pretty late to the party, but decided to investigate it anyway since I have to deal with many stores whose indexers get stuck because of various SQL errors related to the URL rewrite index and whose tables are way too big and out of proportions for the amount of categories and products they have.

This bug will make your table grow into the millions of rows and hundreds of …

My previous post focused on some of the problems of doing multi-tenant MySQL.

One of the reasons why I started hacking on Drizzle was that the multi-tenancy options for MySQL just weren’t very good (this is also the reason why I run my blog in a VM and not a shared hosting solution).

What you really want is to be able to give your users access to a virtual database server. What you don’t want is to be administering a separate database server for each of your users. What you want are CATALOGs.

A CATALOG is a collection of SCHEMAs (which have TABLEs in them). Each CATALOG is isolated from all the others. Once you connect to a catalog, that’s it. They are entirely separate units. There are no cross-catalog queries or CHANGE CATALOG commands. It is as if each catalog is its own database server.