Is there existing terminology / pattern to cover this scenario?

Question

In our SaaS system we're dividing users into separate "pools" according to the customer that originally "owns" the user. We're using "email addresses plus ID of owning organisation" to identify users, rather than just email addresses - so duplicate email addresses can exist between customers (don't ask). Users arrive at the site on various subdomains, and we use these subdomains to identify the "user pool" we're authenticating the user against.

My question: is there any established name for this pattern or something similar?

Cheers!

Answer 1

"home-realm-discovery" is a common term for identifying what tenant a user belongs to in a multi-tenant SaaS application. It's most often talked about in the context of Federated Identity but applies in your case too. Using a sub-domain like you're doing is a common practice.

Answer 2

In database terminology, when uniquely identifying a row using more than one column, this is called a composite primary key (aka compound key).

The scenario you describe is used commonly when a single database is used for multiple customers - one form of multitenancy.

Answer 3

I am not aware of any specific name for this scenario, but in general, this would fall under the phrase "multi-tenant" / "multi-tenancy". Many SaaS implementations do customer (or rather tenant) based branding already on the login screen, which would mean that they'd have to identify the user based on the URL / subdomain, or at least in some way other than the email address used.

Routing to different servers based on the subdomain is also a common way to achieve tiered service levels for SaaS implementations.

I'm not sure I've answered the question, but I hope the general info helps!