A Semi-Automatic Approach of Transforming Applications to be Multi-Tenancy Enabled

Abstract

As a popular technique in cloud computing, multi-tenancy (MT) can significantly ease software maintenance, and improve resource utilization. To make use of the MT technique, an application may need to be transformed to be MT-enabled. This process involves finding and processing a special kind of data entities named global isolation points (GIPs). Practically, finding all GIPs of an application is challenging. Traditional method involves manually browsing the application code, requiring a great deal of human effort. To solve this problem, we introduce a toolkit named Auto-MT to help find and process GIPs of an application. Auto-MT is able to find new GIPs based on their relations to known GIPs. To characterize the relation, a novel graph called value flow graph (VFG) is introduced, which models the value flows of data entities. It can also be used in other scenarios, like taint analysis. We have implemented Auto-MT as an Eclipse Plug-in, and applied it to transform Roller, a widely used Java application. Experimental results show that Auto-MT saves substantial human effort, and accelerates the process of transforming applications to be MT-enabled.