[Tropical On Rails 2026] ActiveRecord::Tenanted and SQLite

Discover Basecamp's new ActiveRecord::Tenanted gem for multi-tenant Rails apps. Learn database-per-tenant architecture with automatic data isolation. I'll share what works, current limitations, future features already mapped, and honest trade-offs from implementing this brand-new solution.

Transcript

1. What Works (and What Doesn't) with ActiveRecord::Tenanted and SQLite
2. Miguel Marcondes Tech Leader Blog: blog.codeminer42.com LinkedIn: lnkd.in/miguel-marcondes-filho More: beacons.ai/triatleta.dev
5. First Things First
6. A tenant can be an individual user, but more frequently, it’s a group of users, such as a customer organization, that shares common access to and privileges within the application instance. Each tenant’s data is isolated from, and invisible to, the other tenants sharing the application instance, ensuring data security and privacy for all tenants. www.ibm.com/think/topics/multi-tenant “
7. A tenant can be an individual user, but more frequently, it’s a group of users , such as a customer organization, that shares common access to and privileges within the application instance. Each tenant’s data is isolated from, and invisible to, the other tenants sharing the application instance, ensuring data security and privacy for all tenants. www.ibm.com/think/topics/multi-tenant “
8. Multi-DB Improvements • Per-database Connection Switching • Horizontal Sharding • Database namespaced tasks • Read-only Replicas • Handling Associations with Joins across Databases https://rubyonrails.org/2020/12/9/Rails-6-1-0-release
13. Friendly neighborhood
14. acts_as_tenant • Isolate tenant data in a single database (Row-level multitenancy) • Very limited integration with the "rest of the Rails framework" apartment • Extends ActiveRecord to make dynamic connections • Pre-dates Rails thread-safe sharding model • Has a alpha version to be released with rails 8 compatibility • Very limited integration with the "rest of the Rails framework"
15. ActiveRecord::Tenanted
23. "rest of the Rails framework" • Action Cable • Active Job • Active Storage • Action Mailer • Caching • View Caching
24. Active Job
28. https://github.com/rails/mission_control-jobs
29. Action Mailer
33. Active Storage
36. storage/development-clinic/development-clinic/mu64wnrp2z0atjqbzh8whyvvyyg4 Root path Blob key
37. Action Cable
41. gid://healthcare-management/Staff/1?tenant=development-clinic App name Tenant param Model Record ID
42. • Active Job serializes record arguments as Global IDs • Action Cable uses Global IDs to generate unique stream channel names • Action Text uses signed Global IDs to reference attachments Error Condition Meaning MissingTenantError GID has no ?tenant= param A Global ID was created without tenant info NoTenantError No current tenant context Trying to locate a tenanted record while untenanted WrongTenantError GID tenant != current tenant Record belongs to a different tenant
43. https://github.com/rails/mission_control-jobs
46. What is the best part about caching jokes?
48. Fragment Caching
49. Collection Caching
50. Russian Doll Caching
52. Low-Level Caching
53. SQL Caching
54. Limitations
55. https://github.com/basecamp/activerecord-tenanted/discussions/194
56. https://github.com/basecamp/activerecord-tenanted/issues/222
57. https://github.com/basecamp/activerecord-tenanted/discussions/183
58. KEY CONCEPTS • Multi-tenancy: one application, isolated data per tenant • Rails Multi-DB Support: connecting to multiple databases from a single app • Vertical vs Horizontal Sharding: splitting by table vs splitting by rows/tenant • Connection Switching: Rails’ mechanism for routing queries to the right database • SQLite in Production: Rails 8’s push toward SQLite as a viable production database • Subdomain-based Routing: resolving tenant context from the request subdomain • Cross-database Associations: disable_joins, optional: true tradeoffs • Solid Queue: Rails’ default Active Job backend • Global ID: Rails’ universal object identifier (used by Action Cable, Active Job) • Rails Caching Layers: Fragment, Collection, Russian Doll, Low-level, SQL Active Storage, Action Cable, Action Mailer, Rails 8 Authentication, Read-only Replicas, Database Namespaced Tasks, Abstract Base Classes, Omakase Configuration, Foreign Key Constraints…
59. What is the best part about caching jokes?
60. Obrigado!