Database Federation (Functional Partitioning)
Partition databases by domain context: Separating Users DB, Billing DB, Catalog DB, cross-database joins, and foreign data wrappers (FDW).
01.1. What is Database Federation?
Database Federation (also known as Functional Partitioning) is the architectural practice of splitting a single monolithic database into multiple independent, specialized databases based on business domain boundaries (e.g., Users DB, Orders DB, Billing DB, Product Catalog DB).
Key Distinction: Federation vs Sharding
- Horizontal Sharding: Splits rows of the same table across multiple database servers (e.g., users 1–1M on Shard A, users 1M–2M on Shard B). Every shard shares the identical schema.
- Database Federation: Splits different tables and entire bounded contexts into dedicated database instances (e.g., all user tables on Server A, all billing tables on Server B).
Database federation is universally the recommended first scaling step when a monolithic relational database starts hitting CPU or I/O ceilings, before considering the severe complexity of horizontal table sharding.
Database Federation (Domain-Based Separation) 🏛️🏛️🏛️
Database Federation (Domain-Based Separation) 🏛️🏛️🏛️
Splitting one monolithic database into distinct domain databases by business function.
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