SQLServerPedia

Tables with hundreds of millions of rows or billions of rows need a way to manage that data easier.  SQL Server 2005 introduced partitioning, and it’s been improved ever since.  Learn about how to implement it in this ten-minute training video.

For more about SQL Server table partitioning and other VLDB tips, check out our Very Large Databases wiki article.

Subscribing or Downloading the Podcast

If you have an MP3 player or a portable video player and you want to download our videos automatically, you can subscribe to our podcast feeds here:

• MP4 (Apple) Video Feed
• WMV (Microsoft) Video Feed
• MP3 Audio-Only Feed
• Zune One-Click Subscribe for Video
• Zune One-Click Subscribe for MP3

You can also download this video to watch it later:

• MP4 (Apple) Video Download
• WMV (Microsoft) Video Download
• MP3 Audio-Only Download

One of the best things about becoming a Microsoft MVP is meeting other MVPs.  I bring this up because last week was the annual MVP Summit in Seattle, WA.  I was really looking forward to meeting Steve Kass.  Steve Kass is one of the smartest SQL Server MVPs I’ve encountered, especially when it comes to SQL questions.  A while back, I noticed that Steve made an interesting recommendation for a hash function that you could use for partitioning that I thought was worth noting.  A hash function would be very useful if you wanted to implement your own variation of a range partition using a hash function rather than the standard sort of range partitioning where colA values of A-H go to partition 1, values of I-P got to partition 2, and so forth.

Steve notes that you could use the following for hashing something small in size:

   CAST(    SUBSTRING(      HASHBYTES(‘SHA1′,         CAST(my_col AS NVARCHAR(appropriate_size))),8,1) AS tinyint) 

This is just an off the cuff recommendation from Steve and might need some fine tuning, for example, the CAST might throw off persistence.  However, it’s a good start.

Thanks, Steve, for sharing this and thanks, readers, for sharing any improvements you might develop out in the field.