Partitioning for convenience
You might decide to use partitioning in your schema to build additional logic into the definition of your data. You may also use partitioning to simplify the rules.
The following is an example of partitioning to simplify rules. The example compares the differences between rules needed with and without partitioning. In the rule without partitioning, you would specify a condition for each state abbreviation in each region. This could make your rules long, difficult to read, and difficult to maintain. The rule with partitioning is more concise, self-documenting, and easier to maintain.
Rule without partitioning:
=IF(ShipToCode Field:.:Input="NY"|
ShipToCode Field:.:Input="NJ"|
ShipToCode Field:.:Input="PA",
F_MapEast (Record:Input), NONE)
Rule with partitioning:
=F_MapEast (EXTRACT (Record:Input,
PARTITION (ShipToCode Field:.:Input, East)))