Clustering brings records from two or more tables together on a hard disk to improve joins between the two tables. Partitioning a table, by contrast, splits a single table into two or more tables to limit the amount of data the RDBMS has to retrieve at once. There are two types of partitioning operations:

1. Horizontal partitioning, which splits a table's records into two or more tables
2. Vertical partitioning, which splits a table's columns into two or more tables

The best way to remember how each type of partitioning divides a table is to envision drawing a line across a table. If you draw a horizontal line, the table's records are split into two identical tables.

The following lessons explain the advantages and disadvantages of both partitioning methods.
The next lesson introduces horizontal partitioning.