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Virtual Private Databases.

What a lot of enterprise SaaS vendors do is have one single database for all customer data (single tenant). They then use features like Virtual Private Database to hide customer A data from customer B. So that if customer A did a “select *” they only see their own data and not all of the other customers data. This creates faux multi-tenancy and all done using a single db account.

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AKA row-level security - my gut says this feature is not too frequently used in SaaS, to the extent it may bust connection pooling, requires synchronization of database accounts and application identities, etc.--or else pushing some kind of non-db-user session/security context into each query. Similar issues one would see with MSSQL and Kerberos impersonation of the user principal from the app server to the database.

This sounds very much like Row Level Security, but I've never heard the term "Virtual Private Database" to describe it.

It’s the same. Sometimes also referred to as Label Security. Conceptual all accomplishing that same goal.

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