> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.pg-sharding.tech/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Sharded Tables

Sharded tables, also known as **replicated tables** or **distributed tables**, are tables that are distributed across multiple shards, allowing each shard to store a portion of the data.

Sharded tables are useful when you need or have:

* Distributed data across multiple shards for performance and scalability.
* Large datasets that need to be partitioned.
* High availability and fault tolerance by spreading data across multiple servers.
* Certain types of queries isolated to specific shards, reducing the query load on other parts of the system.

## Examples

Some typical use cases for sharded tables include:

* **eCommerce**: Product catalogs, where each product has information about categories, descriptions, and prices, which can be sharded based on product IDs.
* **Social Media**: User data and posts, sharded by user ID.
* **Finance**: Transaction records, sharded by account number or transaction ID.
* **IoT**: Data from devices, sharded by device ID or geographical region.
* **Logs and Analytics**: Event logs and analytics data, sharded by date or region.

## How to use it?

See the [Get Started](/welcome/get_started) guide.