Sharding
Splitting data across machines by key.
Origin
Term originates with Google Bigtable / Yahoo PNUTS work in the mid-2000s. The 1990s called it "horizontal partitioning"; the principle goes back further.
Where it shows up in production
- MongoDB Range or hash-based shard keys; mongos router distributes queries.
- Vitess Sharding layer in front of MySQL; powers YouTube's billions of rows.
- Discord Sharded across thousands of Cassandra+ScyllaDB clusters by guild_id; documented in engineering blogs.
On Semicolony
Sources & further reading
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