Consider Starting Without Partitioning

Impact: MEDIUM

Start without partitioning and add it later only if:

You have clear data lifecycle requirements (retention, archiving)
Your access patterns clearly benefit from partition pruning
You understand the cardinality implications

Example (start simple):

sql

-- Start simple, no partitioning
CREATE TABLE events (
    timestamp DateTime,
    event_type LowCardinality(String),
    user_id UInt64
)
ENGINE = MergeTree()
ORDER BY (event_type, timestamp);

-- Add partitioning later if needed for lifecycle management
-- (requires table recreation or materialized view migration)

When to add partitioning:

Need	Add Partitioning?
Time-based data retention	Yes
Archive old data to cold storage	Yes
Query performance on time ranges	Maybe (test first)
No specific lifecycle needs	No

Reference: Choosing a Partitioning Key