FAQ : What is Table Partitioning in SQL Server?

Partitioning is the process of dividing data into small , more manageable chunks. We can divide the data horizontally (on rows ) or vertically (on columns) . Table partitioning can make very large tables and indexes easier to manage, and improve the performance of APPROPRIATELY FILTERED queries. Horizontal Partitioning is one of the new feature added in SQL Server 2005 (in earlier versions we used to create separate physical table and create a wrapper view which union all the tables which is also known as Partition View). When a table is created as a partitioned table, SQL Server automatically places the table's rows in the correct partition, and SQL Server maintains the partitions behind the scenes. You can then perform maintenance operations on individual partitions, and properly filtered queries will access only the correct partitions. But it is still one table as far as SQL Server is concerned