Finally understand the difference between these two terms that everyone uses interchangeably (but shouldn't!).
Here's where things get confusing - people use "sharding" and "partitioning" like they mean the same thing. They don't!
The Simple Truth:
Think of it like organizing a massive library:
Partitioning is deciding how to split the books:
Sharding is deciding which buildings to put them in:
The Memory Trick: "A database is sharded while the data is partitioned."
When you say "I have 5 shards," you mean "I have 5 database servers." When you say "My data is partitioned," you mean "My data is split into logical chunks."
Key Insight: "Partitioning is about dividing your data smartly, sharding is about spreading those divisions across multiple database servers."
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