Database “sharding” came from Ultima Online? (2009)

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Origin of the term “sharding”

  • Consensus that database partitioning long predates Ultima Online; the game is credited mainly for popularizing the name, not the technique.
  • Multiple commenters stress the article explicitly says it’s about naming database partitioning “shards” in the game’s lore (a world-crystal split into parallel worlds/servers).
  • N-gram and Wikipedia references suggest “database shard/sharding” only appears in print in the 2000s, after Ultima Online (1997), which supports but does not prove the etymology.
  • Wikipedia lists two likely sources for the term in databases: Ultima Online and an earlier SHARD system.

Partitioning vs. sharding

  • Several comments clarify that sharding is a kind of partitioning, usually:
    • Vertical vs. horizontal partitioning as general concepts.
    • Sharding ≈ horizontal partitioning, often across multiple instances/machines.
  • Others use “shard” and “partition” nearly interchangeably and note even Wikipedia is inconsistent.
  • One definition: partitioning can be within a single instance; sharding implies separate instances.

Earlier academic and industry uses

  • References to an 1980s “SHARD” system (System for Highly Available Replicated Data) and related papers from 1985–1988.
  • Difficulties locating some of these papers; at least one person has a copy but is unsure about copyright.
  • Some recall “shards” being used informally with DB2 in the 90s, but this could be influenced by either that system or later gaming usage.
  • Several comments emphasize the original question is about word origin in DB context, not whether the technique is new.

MMOs and broader tech impact

  • Multiple anecdotes that MMOs drove early large-scale distributed systems, sharding, and clever network tricks.
  • Ultima Online cited as pioneering in scaling, social systems, and ethics of online communities.
  • Other games and virtual worlds mentioned for similar innovations (e.g., per-user or per-world sharding, BitTorrent-based patching).

Ultima Online culture and legacy

  • Many nostalgic stories: unofficial “shards,” player-run worlds, heavy social dynamics, PK vs. “carebear” debates.
  • Discussion of ongoing freeshards and modern spiritual successors aiming for single shared universes without sharding.

Debugging and engineering war stories

  • Memorable debugging tales: using PC speakers as “caveman debugging,” audio cues tied to code paths, Malloc “Geiger counters,” even AM radios for hardware noise.
  • Seen as emblematic of the creativity in early game and systems programming.

Scalability and sharding schemes

  • Question raised about indefinitely scalable sharding like S3; no definitive answer, but:
    • Examples given of very large sharded deployments (e.g., LiveJournal) using manual user-based shards plus a global lookup.
    • Per-customer databases described as a simple but imperfect scaling approach, with “one huge customer” as a typical stress point.

Meta and information-finding

  • Frustration expressed that attention-grabbing posts often mix partial truth and speculation; comments are needed to reconstruct nuance.
  • Prior HN threads on the same topic are cataloged; a desire is voiced for better automatic surfacing of related discussions.