What does "sharding" mean in programming?
sharding is one of the most common terms in software development. This guide explains what it means, how it is used in practice, and why it matters, with real examples from the developer world.
Definition
Splitting a database horizontally into smaller pieces (shards), each stored on a separate server. Each shard holds a subset of the data, determined by a shard key (e.g. user_id mod N). Sharding enables databases to scale beyond what a single server can handle. The trade-off: cross-shard queries are complex and expensive.
Example
"We shard the users table by user_id: users with IDs 1-1M are on shard 1, 1M-2M on shard 2, and so on."
Related terms
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