PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT THROUGH TABLE PARTITIONING (Comparison of table partitioning in SQL Server 2008)

Abstract

Increasing the size of the databases might face database administrators withperformance issues.Most of the software vendors for DBMS products have included tools andtechniques that help the database administrator to improve the performance of thedatabase. In this article we will test one of the techniques used to enhance thedatabase performance, named "table partitioning". The test will be done on SQLServer, which is one of the most used database management systems. The articlewill show the steps to implement the table partitioning in SQL Server 2008 R2. Apartitioned table with two partitions will be created to test the performance ofqueries on each partition. A data population process will be applied to the table inorder to fill the partitions with differentiated amount of data. The largest partition will be called "archive" and the smaller one "current".A comparison table storing the amount of time required to execute each of the queries will be created. Six tests for each query will be executed in order to provide accurate results.The comparison table will guide the interpretation process and will facilitate the conclusions.