title: Database sharding vs partitioning
body: <p>I have been reading about scalable architectures recently. In that context, two words that keep on showing up with regards to databases are <em>sharding</em> and <em>partitioning</em>. I looked up descriptions but still ended up confused.</p>
  
  <p>Could the experts at stackoverflow help me get the basics right?</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>What is the difference between <em>sharding</em> and <em>partitioning</em> ? </li>
  <li>Is it true that <em>'all sharded databases are essentially partitioned (over different nodes), but all partitioned databases are not necessarily sharded'</em> ?</li>
  </ul>