Retro-fitting AuthP in an existing multi-tenant database

[diddlys]

I have only recently come across the AuthP library, having got here via various routes including OrchardCore and ABP. Those frameworks have features I like, though neither seem to cater for hierachical multi-tenancy as far as I can see.
We have an existing hierarchical multi-tenant app, which uses combinations of SQL query structures (to query for tenant data 'ownership'), roles and claims to deliver a multi-tenant hierarchy of sorts. We do not currently have the concept of a DataKey in the database, and I have a few questions:

1. Is a DataKey needed in all tables where tenant-owned (and therefore data private to a specific tenant) data is stored? In our case, this is many tens of tables.
2. Is retro-fitting AuthP feasible into a database that does not have any DataKeys currently?
   Thanks for any help. I should say that I have not yet had a play with the sample code, so this may all be apparent when I do that but if anyone could help me out I would be grateful.

[JonPSmith]

Hi @diddlys,

I assume you are using schema-per-tenant approach, which is why you don't have a DataKey (although I'm not sure how you can do hierarchical multi-tenants without a DataKey - see my comments later). Unfortunately, the AuthP library, which uses EF Core (which I know very well due to writing the book Entity Framework Core in Action) needs a DataKey to differentiate each "tenant" (NOTE: if using sharding, then you don't need a DataKey). That means you would need to do change your database to add a DataKey (and have one schema), which would be a a big task.

Also, unlike OrchardCore, the AuthP library is backend code, so you have to build the frontend code. To be honest, if I was doing this I would build a new app using AuthP and when its working, then I would build some code to read the OrchardCore database and setup the tenants, users etc. - that's a lot of work.

though neither seem to cater for hierachical multi-tenancy as far as I can see.

I'm not sure what you mean by "hierarchical multi-tenancy", but AuthP has quite good hierarchical multi-tenancy feature - see the article "Building ASP.NET Core and EF Core hierarchical multi-tenant apps". The Example4 app in the repo provides a example hierarchical multi-tenant - each example is designed to load test data, users etc. on first startup so that you can try out its features.