With key range partitioning, the Integration Service distributes rows of data based on a port or set of ports that you define as the partition key. For each port, you define a range of values. The Integration Service uses the key and ranges to send rows to the appropriate partition.

For example, if you specify key range partitioning at a Source Qualifier transformation, the Integration Service uses the key and ranges to create the WHERE clause when it selects data from the source. Therefore, you can have the Integration Service pass all rows that contain customer IDs less than 135000 to one partition and all rows that contain customer IDs greater than or equal to 135000 to another partition.

If you specify hash user keys partitioning at a transformation, the Integration Service uses the key to group data based on the ports you select as the key. For example, if you specify ITEM_DESC as the hash key, the Integration Service distributes data so that all rows that contain items with the same description go to the same partition.

Use key range partitioning in mappings where the source and target tables are partitioned by key range.

The following figure shows a mapping where key range partitioning can optimize writing to the target table:

The target table in the database is partitioned by ITEM_ID as follows:

To optimize writing to the target table, complete the following tasks:

When you set the key range, the Integration Service sends all items with IDs less than 3000 to the first partition. It sends all items with IDs between 3000 and 5999 to the second partition. Items with IDs greater than or equal to 6000 go to the third partition.