Re: specific partitioning by varchar column

[Phil Hildebrand]

I think you would need to modify the table in order to allow for an integer to partition on (say, providerid that maps uniquely to provider)

I believe that key partitioning only works on varchars because it uses mod(), which is an allowed partitioning function, but wouldn't guarantee all keys get hashed to different partitions:

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/partitioning-limitations-functions.html

If you added providerid you could use that in a range or list partition.

I'd be interested to know as well though if there is some other way (without adding the column)