As you manage multiple tenants and multi-tenant database objects in OpenEdge Management/OpenEdge Explorer, there are several terms with which you will become familiar. These terms are described in the following sections.
Tenant
There are three types of tenants: default, regular, and super tenant.
The default tenant in a multi-tenant database is a user who does not establish tenancy as part of authentication to the database. Because the user has not established tenancy, the default tenant can access only shared table data within the database or the default partition of a multi-tenant table. There is only one default tenant per multi-tenant database.
A regular tenant can access its own data, data for any other tenants in the same tenant group, or data in shared tables. (A shared table is one whose data is available to all tenants in the database.)
A super-tenant does not have its own data but can access all shared tables and all multi-tenant data in the database.
Area
An area is a physical layout on disk and represents physical storage. An area can contain multiple partitions.
Partition
A partition is a logical organizing of data by tenant and by object (table, index, or LOB field) within an area. A partition is contained inside a single area.
For shared tables there is one partition per table, index, and LOB field. For multi-tenant tables there is one partition for each table, index, and LOB field per tenant.
Tenants in a group share the partitions for the table and each associated LOB field and index.
Group
A group is a partition for a table, along with partitions for the table's LOB fields and indexes, that can be shared by tenants. All tenants in a group have access to the same data in the table. When you create a group, you create an independent partition that multiple tenants view.
Default area
When you convert an existing shared table to one enabled for multi-tenancy, you can decide whether to save the existing table data, known as the default area. If you are creating a new multi-tenant table, you can also decide whether to create (keep) the area for the default tenant.
Allocation
Creating a new tenant in an existing multi-tenant database results in the establishment of a new tenant partition for each existing multi-tenant table defined in the database. You can assign a specific storage area for each table, its indexes, and its LOB fields, or you can use the previously defined default locations.
You can also specify if or when partitions for a table should be allocated. The allocation decision you make for a table also applies to the table's indexes and LOB fields.
You can deallocate a multi-tenant table from a tenant or a group. Deallocation can be helpful in freeing up storage space so that it is available for reuse.
