Re: partitioning

[Phil Hildebrand]

Since you need an int to partition with MySQL currently, it might be difficult to set that up outside of modifying your schema.

If it's straight forward to modify your schema, you could add an integer column related to the first letter of the user name (1=a, 2=b, etc) and then add that to the primary key, and use a list partition.

Your other option would be to add user name to the primary key (if it's not already), and then use a key partition, which will do a hash on the primary key. This won't guarantee all a's being in the same partition, but it will give you the ability to create 40 partitions and allow MySQL to chose the partitions for you.