How do we separate distinct communities?

[manassehkatz]

@Marc.2377

Every subsite/community will query a separate database (not just schema). This is for both isolation and performance reasons. “ But deployment will be a nightmare ”, I guess some of you might worry. Fear not; there are ways to deal with it, either with ORM-managed migrations or even plain old-school upgrade scripts (my style!).

I strongly disagree. I’ve done both types of systems. Managing this as separate databases is a recipe for disaster. Advantages of each method:

• Multiple Databases

  • Query speed increased in your largest communities, provided your largest communities databases are each on a separate server.

• Single Database (everything “simpler queries” and/or “faster” except if specified as other reasons):

  • Schema changes
  • Consolidated reporting
  • Backup/restore
  • HNQ
  • User Profile management (at many levels from authentication to history viewing to view of “all my communities”)
  • High-level Moderation (e.g., User “bans”)
  • Migration of Questions between communtiies
  • Split or Merge of Communities (relatively unlikely, but could happen)

As @cellio noted, the only query speed issue of Multiple Databases really only makes a difference when you get to huge databases. In addition, if we need more “isolation” for a particular community then it may be that the better solution is for that community to spin up its own instance of Codidact.