Mattias,
Thanks.
One more question:
Does partitioning help concurrent inserts/updates?
I was under the impression that it does. But then I read this:
http://datacharmer.blogspot.com/2010/05/two-quick-performance-tips-with-mysql.html
"Whenever you insert a record, the partitioning engine locks the entire table."
It it is true that MySQL locks the entire partitioned table for inserts, then all writes are being serialized. That'd mean partitioned tables would have much worse insert/update performance than an unpartitioned table which uses row-level instead of table-level locks.
Could you clarify this? Thanks