what is a good way to horizontal shard in postgresql

Question

what is a good way to horizontal shard in postgresql

1. pgpool 2
2. gridsql

which is a better way to use sharding

also is it possible to paritition without changing client code

It would be great if some one can share a simple tutorial or cookbook example of how to setup and use sharding

Answer 1

PostgreSQL allows partitioning in two different ways. One is by range and the other is by list. Both use table inheritance to do partition.
Partitioning by range, usually a date range, is the most common, but partitioning by list can be useful if the variables that is the partition are static and not skewed.

Partitioning is done with table inheritance so the first thing to do is set up new child tables.

CREATE TABLE measurement (
    x        int not null,
    y        date not null,
    z        int
);

CREATE TABLE measurement_y2006 ( 
    CHECK ( logdate >= DATE '2006-01-01' AND logdate < DATE '2007-01-01' )
) INHERITS (measurement);

CREATE TABLE measurement_y2007 (
    CHECK ( logdate >= DATE '2007-01-01' AND logdate < DATE '2008-01-01' ) 
) INHERITS (measurement);

Then either rules or triggers need to be used to drop the data in the correct tables. Rules are faster on bulk updates, triggers on single updates as well as being easier to maintain. Here is a sample trigger.

CREATE TRIGGER insert_measurement_trigger
    BEFORE INSERT ON measurement
    FOR EACH ROW EXECUTE PROCEDURE measurement_insert_trigger();

and the trigger function to do the insert

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION measurement_insert_trigger()
RETURNS TRIGGER AS $$
BEGIN
    IF ( NEW.logdate >= DATE '2006-01-01' 
         AND NEW.logdate < DATE '2007-01-01' ) THEN
        INSERT INTO measurement_y2006 VALUES (NEW.*);
    ELSIF ( NEW.logdate >= DATE '2007-01-01' 
            AND NEW.logdate < DATE '2008-01-01' ) THEN
        INSERT INTO measurement_y2006m03 VALUES (NEW.*);
    ELSE
        RAISE EXCEPTION 'Date out of range.';
    END IF;
    RETURN NULL;
END;
$$
LANGUAGE plpgsql;

These examples are simplified versions of the postgresql documentation for easier reading.

I am not familiar with pgpool2, but gridsql is a commercial product designed for EnterpriseDB, a commercial database that is built on top of postgresql. Their products are very good, but I do not think that it will work on standard postgresl.