[3] Where distributed computing is used to separate load between multiple servers (either for performance or reliability reasons), a shard approach may also be useful.
[citation needed] There is also a requirement for some notification and replication mechanism between schema instances, so that the unpartitioned tables remain as closely synchronized as the application demands.
The introduced complexity of database sharding causes the following potential problems:[citation needed] In a database context, most recognize the term "shard" is most likely derived from either one of two sources: Computer Corporation of America's "A System for Highly Available Replicated Data",[28] which utilized redundant hardware to facilitate data replication (as opposed to horizontal partitioning); or the critically acclaimed 1997 MMORPG video game Ultima Online which set 8 Guinness World Records and was designated by Time as one of the 100 greatest video games produced of all time.
[29][30] Richard Garriott, creator of Ultima Online, recollects the term being coined during production phase when they attempted to create a self-regulating virtual ecology system, whereby players may leverage new internet access (a revolutionary technology at the time) to interact and harvest in-game resources.
[30] Although the virtual ecology functioned as intended during in-house testing, its natural balance failed "almost instantaneously" due to players killing off every living wildlife across the playable area faster than the spawning system could operate.
Garriott's production team attempted to mitigate this issue by separating the global player base into separate sessions, and rewriting part of Ultima Online's fictional connection to the end of Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness, where the defeat of its antagonist Mondain also led to the creation of multiverse "shards".
This modification provided Garriott's team with the fictional basis needed to justify creating copies of the virtual environment.
However, the game's sharp rise to critical acclaim also meant that the new multiverse virtual ecology system was quickly overwhelmed as well.