Sharding
Oracle Sharding distributes segments of a data set across many databases (shards) on different computers, on-premises or in cloud. It enables globally distributed, linearly scalable, multimodel databases. It requires no specialized hardware or software. Oracle Sharding does all this while rendering the strong consistency, full power of SQL, support for structured and unstructured data, and the Oracle Database ecosystem. It meets data sovereignty requirements and support applications that require low latency and high availability.
Build internet scale applications
Oracle BlueKai Data Management Platform uses Oracle Sharding to store petabytes of data to scale to millions of transactions per second with a single database.
Use Sharding to meet data sovereignty (PDF)
Learn how to use Sharding to build a global database that meets data sovereignty requirements.
Build a hyperscale application using Oracle Sharding
Why choose Oracle Sharding?
Future-proof scalability for increased data volume and transaction processing
Eliminate performance bottlenecks while enabling linearly scaled database performance.
How Oracle builds internet scale applications with Oracle Database (43:48)Data sovereignty
Ensures that data stays in a given geographical location. Sharding facilitates a single global database, with data distributed across multiple regions.
Learn how to build a global databaseMulticloud deployment
Use a shared-nothing architecture to meet data sovereignty and data proximity requirements and to protect databases from unplanned downtime.
Multicloud reference architectureProcess a very large amount of data faster
All shards are presented to an application as a single logical database, speeding query response time on extremely large datasets.
Learn moreData pipeline
Data can be loaded on all shards in parallel at extremely high rates, which powers linearly scalable architecture for data ingest. Additionally, Oracle Sharding can be used for Event Stream Processing, Internet of Things, Log Analytics, metric store, and time series data, eliminating the need for a separate data pipeline.
Loading data into a sharded databaseData lake
Oracle Database is a converged database. It can store relational data and other types of unstructured or semistructured data, like Text, JSON, Graph, and Spatial. Oracle Sharding can be used to store massive amounts of structured and unstructured data and to eliminate data fragmentation.
Sharding JSON documents collectionSharding product features
Automated data distribution
Automated sharding and resharding of data
Oracle Sharding automatically places data on the desired shard, saving time and eliminating manual data preparation.
Features
- Multiple sharding methods (system-managed and user-defined)
- Composit sharding which allows two levels of sharding with different sharding methods and keys
- Parallel data ingestion on all shards
- Parallel queries across all shards
Elasticity
Flexible sharding based on your needs
Shards can be added and removed, and data can be resharded without any downtime or data loss.
Features
- Online addition and removal of shards
- Automated resharding of data
Centralized administration
Centrally manage and monitor sharded databases as a single logical database
A shard catalog allows customers to manage all shards in a sharded database as a single, logical database.
Features
- Setup and configuration of the sharded database
- Addition and removal of shards
- High-availability configuration
- Database object management
- Patching of shards
- Detailed monitoring metrics
- Security configuration
Automated application routing
Simplified application development
Oracle Sharding is natively supported by Oracle Database client drivers. Developers can treat a sharded database as a single logical database, simplifying application development.
Features
- Automated request routing to shards
- Automated routing of multishard requests to coordinator
- Transaction support for multishard updates
- Support for JDBC, OCI, .Net drivers
- Automated failover to standbys
- Support for FAN events
- Automatic identification of sharding key (21 JDBC)
High availability
Zero unplanned or planned downtime
A sharded database has protection from unplanned outages and provides mechanisms for online planned operations, enabling applications to meet stringent availability SLAs.
Features
- Automated data replication
- Automated failover
- Fault isolation
- Online patching and upgrade
- Backup/recovery
- Disaster protection
Persistent memory
Scale out persistent memory databases with Oracle Sharding
Oracle Database 21c allows storing of all data and redo in local persistent memory (PMem). SQL runs directly on data stored in a mapped persistent memory file system, eliminating the IO code path to traditional disk storage.
Features
- Data consistency for writes on PMem
- Reduced failover time
- Optimized use of DRAM
Customer success with Sharding
Epsilon improves scalability, performance, and availability with Oracle Sharding.
Oracle Sharding use cases
-
Internet-scale, real-time online transaction processing
Oracle Sharding eliminates complex data preparation for internet-facing consumer applications, financial and mobile payment applications, and large-scale SaaS applications.
-
Data sovereignty
Oracle Sharding provides linear scalability of transactions, better application SLAs, and strict data consistency.
-
Big data analytics
Oracle Sharding speeds applications that require massively parallel processing for large data volumes across many compute instances.
-
High-throughput data ingest
Oracle Sharding powers data ingest at extreme speeds for Internet of Things (IoT) applications.
-
Extreme availability
Oracle Sharding supports applications which require very high SLAs often met with fault isolation.
Multicloud deployment
Oracle Sharding allows you to deploy a database that supports extreme scale-out with complete data isolation distributed across a multicloud environment.
Resources
Documentation
- Product documentation Customer-inspired reference architecture patterns
- View patterns
Explore Oracle Cloud deployment architecture patterns, with best practices for scalability, availability, and security.
Related Products
Get started with Sharding
Try Oracle Cloud Free Tier
Build, test, and deploy applications on Oracle Cloud for free.
Contact us
Interested in learning more? Contact one of our industry-leading experts.