Analyzing partition usage and skewing

I sometimes want to know how my data is spread across different partitions in a table or index – after all, this can affect performance and storage a great deal, and if the data is really badly skewed, most or all of it could be stuck in a single partition, rendering the partitioning scheme pretty much useless in the first place.

You can use dynamic management views to find out how your data is spread across different partitions, and how those partitions are delimited, in “plain english”. Here’s how!