Designing partition keys and row keys for optimal performance in Azure Table Storage involves considering query patterns, load balancing, and scalability.
1. Identify common query patterns: Design partition keys based on frequent queries to minimize cross-partition transactions.
2. Distribute data evenly: Choose partition keys that distribute data across multiple partitions, avoiding hotspots.
3. Use meaningful row keys: Row keys should be unique within a partition and sorted lexicographically; consider using timestamps or GUIDs.
4. Combine partition key and row key: For range queries, combine both keys into a single composite key.
5. Optimize for batch operations: Group entities with the same partition key to perform batch operations efficiently.
Consider this example:
Entities represent IoT device telemetry data. Common queries involve retrieving data for a specific device over a time range. Partition key could be DeviceID, ensuring even distribution and easy querying. Row key could be an inverted timestamp (e.g., DateTime.MaxValue.Ticks – DateTime.UtcNow.Ticks) to store recent data first.
