you could -- that isn't "partitioning" in the way I discuss it in the linked article when it is split across machines it is generally referred to as sharding:

you could -- that isn't "partitioning" in the way I discuss it in the linked article when it is split across machines it is generally referred to as sharding: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shard_(database_architecture) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shard_(database_architecture)