The graphic shows a unidirectional flow from the customer’s client application at the top to the database shards at the bottom. The client application icon is represented with a mobile device with a person next to it. An arrow points from the client application to two server icons below it that are labeled Connection Pools. To the right of arrow between the client and the connection pools are the words "Sharding Key CustomerID=28459361."

Underneath the connection pools icon are five arrows, of which the leftmost arrow is red and the remaining 4 arrows are black, pointing down to five cylinders in a row, one of which is labeled "Shard." A dashed line surrounds the shard cylinders and the line is labeled "Sharded Database" indicating that the cylinders within the dashed line are the shards in a sharded database.

To the left of the arrows pointing to the shards is an icon with 3 layers labeled “Shard Directors” and there is a dashed red line with no arrow between the shard directors icon and the arrows pointing to the shards.

To the right of the arrows pointing to the shards is an icon with a cylinder and a square labeled “Shard Catalog” and there is a solid grey line with no arrow between the shard catalog icon and the arrows pointing to the shards.