Tuesday, October 8, 2013

sharding

sharding


Sharding is a type of database partitioning that separates very large databases the into smaller, faster, more easily managed parts called data shards. The word shard means a small part of a whole.

A database shard is a horizontal partition of data in a database or search engine. Each of multiple shards is held on a separate database server instance, to spread load. Some data within a database remains present in all shards, but some appears only in a single shard.

What is the difference between sharding and partitioning?

Sharding is a method of splitting and storing a single logical dataset in multiple databases.
Sharding is also referred as horizontal partitioning.