Techniques are disclosed for splitting a database partition into two partitions. In embodiments, where the partition is a hash partition, the partition is split at its logical midpoint, so that half of the partition's rows are placed in each split partition. Where the partition is a hash-range partition, a number of rows of the partition are sampled. Where enough samples fall on each side of the logical midpoint, the logical midpoint is again used as the split point. Where not enough samples fall on one side of the logical midpoint, then the median of the samples is used as the split point.