HowTO cleanup SaaS application - multitenants

MESSI

I would like to start a subject on which every SaaS developer/owner is concerned about:
”How to keep clean and robust my SaaS app?”.

Tenants are coming and leaving the system and orphan data remains.

Which is the best way to keep it clean:

Aware processes (delete child records of the tenant?
SQL queries?

Does anyone have a better description/model/concept of this process? A better way to do it?

I think this would be a very good subject for a next conference or webinar.

Thank you.

hpl123

I would say it depends on the scenario and user type. I myself e.g in a commercial SaaS app archive the user data etc. if nothing else to have it available in the user account if the customer decides to sign up again. The "cost" of keeping the data is in most cases and for most apps minimal if the app is designed right. Just keep in mind privacy laws etc. and what type of information is stored (and for how long) if you go down this route as this can affect what you can store legally etc.. In terms of deleting a tenant entirely, if the app is designed "properly" with owner relationships and e.g 1 master process that initiate the entire chain of tenant deletion stuff, deleting the tenant entirely is easy.

For other types of SaaS e.g to larger organizations, this is trickier I would think and in that scenario, different deletion policies can apply e.g delete all tenant data / store for x time / tenant specific / etc. / etc..