Database sharding vs partitioning
问题 I have been reading about scalable architectures recently. In that context, two words that keep on showing up with regards to databases are sharding and partitioning . I looked up descriptions but still ended up confused. Could the experts at stackoverflow help me get the basics right? What is the difference between sharding and partitioning ? Is it true that 'all sharded databases are essentially partitioned (over different nodes), but all partitioned databases are not necessarily sharded' ?