Revision Notes/System Design Concepts
Field Entry - System Design Concepts
Database Sharding
Horizontally partitioning a database into smaller pieces (shards) each stored on a different server to handle large scale.
Field Note - Real-world Analogy
“Like dividing an encyclopedia into volumes. Volume A-D, Volume E-H, Volume I-L, etc. Each volume is independently readable (a shard). Looking up "Apple" goes straight to Volume A. Looking up everything about a person across topics (cross-shard query) means checking multiple volumes — more work.”
Field Observations - Key Topics Covered
Sharding splits your database table across multiple database instances. Instead of one database with 1 billion user rows, you have 10 databases each with 100 million users. Each database is called a shard. Together they form the complete dataset.
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