The release of MySQL 5.5 has brought several enhancements. While most of the coverage went, understandably, to the semi-synchronous replication, the enhancements of partitioning were neglected, and sometimes there was some degree of misunderstanding on their true meaning. With this article, we want to explain these cool enhancements, especially the parts that were not fully understood.

This article explains how to test the performance of a large database with MySQL 5.1, showing the advantages of using partitions. The test database uses data published by the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Currently, the data consists of ~ 113 million records (7.5 GB data + 5.2 GB index).

The Partition Helper is a Perl script that converts some simple options into lots of partitions. Good for creating partitions on historical data.

Ever get frustrated because you can't enforce foreign key constraints between partitioned tables? Perhaps you'd like the ability to spread innodb partitions across multiple file systems / directories? During this session, we'll be looking at creative ways to use Triggers to get around a few of those annoying limitations, and what kind of impact they might have on your application in production.

Tutorial about MySQL partitions at the MySQL conference 2009. How to create them, what they are about, use cases, benchmarks tips, and tricks.