This section discusses the types of partitioning which are available in MySQL 5.5. These include the types listed here:
This type of partitioning assigns rows to partitions based
on column values falling within a given range. See
Section 19.2.1, “RANGE Partitioning”. MySQL 5.5 adds an
RANGE COLUMNS, to this type.
See Section 184.108.40.206, “RANGE COLUMNS partitioning”.
Similar to partitioning by
that the partition is selected based on columns matching one
of a set of discrete values. See
Section 19.2.2, “LIST Partitioning”. MySQL 5.5 adds an
LIST COLUMNS, to this type.
See Section 220.127.116.11, “LIST COLUMNS partitioning”.
With this type of partitioning, a partition is selected
based on the value returned by a user-defined expression
that operates on column values in rows to be inserted into
the table. The function may consist of any expression valid
in MySQL that yields a nonnegative integer value. An
extension to this type,
LINEAR HASH, is
also available. See Section 19.2.4, “HASH Partitioning”.
This type of partitioning is similar to partitioning by
HASH, except that only one or more
columns to be evaluated are supplied, and the MySQL server
provides its own hashing function. These columns can contain
other than integer values, since the hashing function
supplied by MySQL guarantees an integer result regardless of
the column data type. An extension to this type,
LINEAR KEY, is also available. See
Section 19.2.5, “KEY Partitioning”.
A very common use of database partitioning is to segregate data by
date. Some database systems support explicit date partitioning,
which MySQL does not implement in 5.5. However, it is
not difficult in MySQL to create partitioning schemes based on
DATETIME columns, or based on
expressions making use of such columns.
When partitioning by
KEY, you can use a
DATETIME column as the partitioning
column without performing any modification of the column value.
For example, this table creation statement is perfectly valid in
CREATE TABLE members ( firstname VARCHAR(25) NOT NULL, lastname VARCHAR(25) NOT NULL, username VARCHAR(16) NOT NULL, email VARCHAR(35), joined DATE NOT NULL ) PARTITION BY KEY(joined) PARTITIONS 6;
MySQL's other partitioning types, however, require a partitioning
expression that yields an integer value or
NULL. If you wish to use date-based
LINEAR HASH, you
can simply employ a function that operates on a
DATETIME column and returns such a
value, as shown here:
CREATE TABLE members ( firstname VARCHAR(25) NOT NULL, lastname VARCHAR(25) NOT NULL, username VARCHAR(16) NOT NULL, email VARCHAR(35), joined DATE NOT NULL ) PARTITION BY RANGE( YEAR(joined) ) ( PARTITION p0 VALUES LESS THAN (1960), PARTITION p1 VALUES LESS THAN (1970), PARTITION p2 VALUES LESS THAN (1980), PARTITION p3 VALUES LESS THAN (1990), PARTITION p4 VALUES LESS THAN MAXVALUE );
Additional examples of partitioning using dates may be found in the following sections of this chapter:
For more complex examples of date-based partitioning, see the following sections:
MySQL partitioning is optimized for use with the
TO_SECONDS() functions. However,
you can use other date and time functions that return an integer
NULL, such as
Section 12.7, “Date and Time Functions”, for more information
about such functions.
It is important to remember—regardless of the type of
partitioning that you use—that partitions are always
numbered automatically and in sequence when created, starting with
0. When a new row is inserted into a
partitioned table, it is these partition numbers that are used in
identifying the correct partition. For example, if your table uses
4 partitions, these partitions are numbered
3. For the
LIST partitioning types, it is necessary to
ensure that there is a partition defined for each partition
HASH partitioning, the user
function employed must return an integer value greater than
this issue is taken care of automatically by the hashing function
which the MySQL server employs internally.
Names of partitions generally follow the rules governing other
MySQL identifiers, such as those for tables and databases.
However, you should note that partition names are not
case-sensitive. For example, the following
CREATE TABLE statement fails as
CREATE TABLE t2 (val INT)->
PARTITION BY LIST(val)(->
PARTITION mypart VALUES IN (1,3,5),->
PARTITION MyPart VALUES IN (2,4,6)->
);ERROR 1488 (HY000): Duplicate partition name mypart
Failure occurs because MySQL sees no difference between the
When you specify the number of partitions for the table, this must
be expressed as a positive, nonzero integer literal with no
leading zeros, and may not be an expression such as
6-2, even if it
evaluates to an integer value. Decimal fractions are not
In the sections that follow, we do not necessarily provide all possible forms for the syntax that can be used for creating each partition type; this information may be found in Section 13.1.17, “CREATE TABLE Syntax”.