Creating Partitioned Views
A partitioned view joins horizontally partitioned data from a set of member tables across one or more servers, making the data appear as if from one table. Microsoft SQL Server distinguishes between local and distributed partitioned views. In a local partitioned view, all participating tables and the view reside on the same instance of SQL Server. In a distributed partitioned view, at least one of the participating tables resides on a different (remote) server. In addition, SQL Server differentiates between partitioned views that are updatable and views that are read-only copies of the underlying tables.
Note
The preferred method for partitioning data locally is through partitioned tables. For more information, see Partitioned Tables and Indexes.
Distributed partitioned views are used to implement a federation of database servers. A federation is a group of servers administered independently, but which cooperate to share the processing load of a system. Forming a federation of database servers by partitioning data is the mechanism that enables you to scale out a set of servers to support the processing requirements of large, multitiered Web sites. For more information, see Federated Database Servers.
For information about creating local partitioned views, see Using Partitioned Views.