Partitioning Strategy Advisor
Select the right partitioning (sharding) strategy — range, hash, or compound key — and configure secondary indexes, rebalancing, and request routing for a distributed database. Use when: designing a partition key for a new system; diagnosing write hotspots on monotonically increasing keys (timestamps, auto-increment IDs); evaluating whether an existing sharding scheme supports required query patterns; choosing between document-partitioned (local) vs. term-partitioned (global) secondary indexes and weighing scatter/gather read costs against global index write amplification; or selecting a rebalancing approach (fixed partitions, dynamic partitions, proportional-to-nodes) and routing topology (gossip, ZooKeeper coordination, partition-aware client). Covers Cassandra compound primary key patterns for range queries within hash-distributed partitions, HBase/SSTables range partitioning, Riak consistent hashing, and MongoDB/Elasticsearch index partitioning. Distinct from replication-strategy-selector (topology and consistency) and data-model-selector (schema design). Produces a concrete recommendation: partition key, partitioning method, secondary index approach, rebalancing configuration, and routing topology. Depends on data-model-selector for schema and access pattern context.
