Table partitioning allows you to divide a table into a maximum of 256 partitions. Each of these partitions can contain the maximum number of rows for a table, which is approximately 4294000000. Therefore, partitioning allows your table to be much larger than a non-partitioned table.
You can use a partitioned table in SQL statements anywhere that a table can be referenced. The partitions can be accessed individually by using an ALIAS. To create an alias, see Create an alias.
There are two ways to partition a table. You can partition by hash, which will divide the table into the specified number of equally sized partitions. Or, you can partition by range, which allows you to specify the rows where each partition will begin and end. See Partitioning type for more information.
For more information, see the following: