MySQL 5.7 Release Notes
This section discusses the types of partitioning which are available in MySQL 5.7. These include the types listed here:
RANGE partitioning. This type of partitioning assigns rows to partitions based on column values falling within a given range. See Section 22.2.1, “RANGE Partitioning”. For information about an extension to this type,
RANGE COLUMNS, see Section 22.2.3.1, “RANGE COLUMNS partitioning”.LIST partitioning. Similar to partitioning by
RANGE, except that the partition is selected based on columns matching one of a set of discrete values. See Section 22.2.2, “LIST Partitioning”. For information about an extension to this type,LIST COLUMNS, see Section 22.2.3.2, “LIST COLUMNS partitioning”.HASH 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 an integer value. See Section 22.2.4, “HASH Partitioning”.
An extension to this type,
LINEAR HASH, is also available, see Section 22.2.4.1, “LINEAR HASH Partitioning”.KEY 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 22.2.5, “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 5.7. However, it is
not difficult in MySQL to create partitioning schemes based on
DATE,
TIME, or
DATETIME columns, or based on
expressions making use of such columns.
When partitioning by KEY or LINEAR
KEY, you can use a DATE,
TIME, or
DATETIME column as the partitioning
column without performing any modification of the column value.
For example, this table creation statement is perfectly valid in
MySQL:
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;
In MySQL 5.7, it is also possible to use a
DATE or
DATETIME column as the partitioning
column using RANGE COLUMNS and LIST
COLUMNS partitioning.
MySQL's other partitioning types, however, require a partitioning
expression that yields an integer value or
NULL. If you wish to use date-based
partitioning by RANGE, LIST,
HASH, or LINEAR HASH, you
can simply employ a function that operates on a
DATE,
TIME, or
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_DAYS(),
YEAR(), and
TO_SECONDS() functions. However,
you can use other date and time functions that return an integer
or NULL, such as
WEEKDAY(),
DAYOFYEAR(), or
MONTH(). See
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 0,
1, 2, and
3. For the RANGE and
LIST partitioning types, it is necessary to
ensure that there is a partition defined for each partition
number. For HASH partitioning, the
user-supplied expression must evaluate to an integer value. For
KEY partitioning, 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
shown:
mysql> 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
partition names mypart and
MyPart.
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
0.8E+01 or 6-2, even if it
evaluates to an integer value. Decimal fractions are not
permitted.
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 13.1.18, “CREATE TABLE Statement”.