SQL Server MVP Deep Dives

Chapter 31. Some practical issues in table partitioning

Ron Talmage

This chapter covers two practical topics in SQL Server table partitioning:

• Strategies for creating partition functions
• Minimizing data movement

Large SQL Server databases can become difficult to manage due to their size. Usually such large databases have only a couple of large tables that account for most of the databases’ size. Table partitioning is a method for making those large tables easier to manage, and in some cases improving query performance against those large tables.

Table partitioning is an involved topic and can quickly become complex; therefore, this chapter is going to have a limited scope. Let’s look at table partitioning from a general point of view, and ...