Master the two fundamental ways to split your data and learn when to use each strategy.
Now that you understand the concept, how do you actually split your data? There are two main strategies:
Horizontal Partitioning (Row-Based Splitting): Imagine a users table with 1 million rows:
You're slicing the table horizontally, keeping all columns but splitting the rows.
Vertical Partitioning (Table-Based Splitting): Imagine you have multiple tables:
You're slicing vertically, putting different tables in different databases.
Real-World Example: Horizontal: "All West Coast users go to Database A, East Coast users go to Database B" Vertical: "All authentication stuff goes to Database A, all order stuff goes to Database B"
The Connection: Vertical partitioning is actually the database equivalent of splitting a monolith into microservices!
Key Insight: "Horizontal partitioning splits the same type of data, vertical partitioning splits different types of functionality."
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