Practical Partitioning With MySQL

Learn when to use MySQL partitioning and why. Get answer to the questions such as:

• Why would I use MySQL partitioning if I do not do Data Warehousing?
• Can I have too many partitions?
• Should I use indexes with my partitions?
• Why would I want to make a unique index non-unique when using partitions?
• Which partitioning strategy will work best to solve my problem?

While MySQL partitioning can often dramatically improve performance and scaling in many database solutions, in can also cause heartaches and pain if implemented incorrectly. Often a new mindset that focuses more on partitions and less on indexes is needed in designing and implementing a large scale data warehouse. In addition, partitioning can be used in other, non data warehouse solutions, to greatly improve both performance and uptime of common OLTP systems. Implemented wrong, partitioning can cause more problems than it solves, implemented right, it can dramatically improve performance and lower the load on your system.