XTenantID

XTenantID is a tenant identifier used in multi-tenant software architectures to distinguish between tenants within a single deployment. It serves to scope data, enforce access controls, and route requests to the correct tenant context. Although the name XTenantID is not universally standardized, it is commonly used as a canonical way to represent the tenant in both APIs and data stores.

The format of an XTenantID varies by system. It can be a UUID, a numeric sequence, or an opaque string. To reduce leakage of information, many implementations treat it as an immutable, non-sequential key and avoid exposing predictable values in user interfaces.

In practice, XTenantID is carried in a tenant context that accompanies requests and data. It is often transmitted as an HTTP header (for example X-Tenant-ID) or as a field in a JSON payload, and it can also appear as part of database partition keys or sharding rules. The backend uses the value to enforce tenancy boundaries, isolate data, and apply per-tenant configuration.

Security and governance considerations include validating the identifier, enforcing least privilege access, preventing cross-tenant data access, and ensuring that logs and error messages do not reveal sensitive tenant information. It is also important to centralize tenancy management to avoid inconsistent interpretations of the identifier across services.

Related concepts include multi-tenancy, data isolation, tenancy context propagation, and tenant-aware authorization.