As described in xref:install.adoc#configuring-debezium-topics[Installing Debezium], by default, data collections changes will be sent to a topic with a single partition.
If you decide to change this configuration as described in xref:configuration/topic-auto-create-config.adoc[Customization of Kafka Connect automatic topic creation], Kafka will determine the partition by hashing the key by default.
You can use this SMT if you want to use a specific data collection column to calculate the destination partition. The hash of the value will be used to compute the destination partition.
In the configuration, you specify the data collection column you want to use to calculate the partition and the max number of partition configured for the data collection.
Only events that come from configured data collections will be processed. The others will be simply leaved as is.
To configure a {prodname} connector to route events to a specific partition, configure the `ComputePartition` SMT in the Kafka Connect configuration for the {prodname} connector.
For example, you might add the following configuration in your connector configuration.
It specifies that `name` column will be used to compute the partition for the `products` data-collections and that the number of partition for this data-collections is `2`.
Note that the number of partitions must be the number that you have configured for the topic. As you can see in the example we have defined that every topic will have `2` partitions.
Given this `Products` table
.Products table
[cols="25%a,25%a,25%a,25%a"]
|===
|id
|name
|description
|weight
|101
|scooter
|Small 2-wheel scooter
| 3.14
|102
|car battery
|12V car battery
| 8.1
|103
|12-pack drill bits
|12-pack of drill bits with sizes ranging from #40 to #3
| 0.8
|104
|hammer
|12oz carpenter's hammer
| 0.75
|105
|hammer
|14oz carpenter's hammer
| 0.875
|106
|hammer
|16oz carpenter's hammer
| 1.0
|107
|rocks
|box of assorted rocks
| 5.3
|108
|jacket
|water resistent black wind breaker
| 0.1
|109
|spare tire
|24 inch spare tire
| 22.2
|===
the records with id: `104,105,106` will go on the same partition as the name `hammer` is the same.
|A comma-separated list of colon-delimited pairs to specify column used for a specific data-collection, e.g. inventory.products:name,inventory.orders:purchaser.
|A comma-separated list of colon-delimited pairs to specify the number of partitions used for a specific data-collection, e.g. inventory.products:2,inventory.orders:3.
