8. It’s All About Sharding

Sharding for Big Data is an essential concept. The term database sharding has been around for years, and there are lots of different definitions. In this chapter I will cover the following questions:

• What is sharding?

• How is sharding used for Big Data?

• What are the types of sharding?

Sharding: The Ultimate Answer to Database Slowdown

In Chapter 2, “Why Databases Slow Down,” I covered the primary reasons for degraded database performance. As a database grows, it inevitably gets slower—and not on a nice linear path, but often in a rapid exponential curve. The most common reason for the “hockey stick” performance degradation curve is database indexes. If you recall, as an index grows in size, depth, and complexity, ...

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