Table partitioning is a procedure that creates multiple page chains for a single table.

The primary purpose of table partitioning is to improve the performance of concurrent inserts to a table by reducing contention for the last page of a page chain.

Partitioning can also potentially improve performance by making it possible to distribute a table's I/O over multiple database devices. Page Contention for Inserts

By default, ASE stores a table's data in one double-linked set of pages called a page chain. If the table does not have a clustered index, ASE makes all inserts to the table in the last page of the page chain.

When a transaction inserts a row into a table, ASE holds an exclusive page lock on the last page while it inserts the row. If the current last page becomes full, ASE allocates and links a new last page.

As multiple transactions attempt to insert data into the table at the same time, performance problems can occur. Only one transaction at a time can obtain an exclusive lock on the last page, so other concurrent insert transactions block each other.