ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5
Examples: stamp, midi, nerd, graphql, patents

A Single Shard

Imagine you have a big box full of colorful lego pieces. Now imagine that each of these colors represents a different type of information. For example, blue legos might represent information about people, while red legos represent information about who owns what.

Now, let's say your friend wants to borrow some of your legos to build a castle. You could give them the whole box, but that might be overwhelming and confusing for them. Instead, you could give them just the blue legos, because that's all they need to build the people for their castle.

In the world of computer systems, a shard is like a separate box of legos that contains only one type of information. It's useful because it can make it easier and faster to manage and process that specific type of information. So, for example, if a company has a lot of customer data, they might create a single shard that only contains information about those customers. This can make it faster and more efficient to work with that data, without having to sift through a bunch of other unrelated information.