Microsoft SQL Server Partitioning Switching Partitions
Example
According to this [TechNet Microsoft page][1],
Partitioning data enables you to manage and access subsets of your data quickly and efficiently while maintaining the integrity of the entire data collection.
When you call the following query the data is not physically moved; only the metadata about the location of the data changes.
ALTER TABLE [SourceTable] SWITCH TO [TargetTable]
The tables must have the same columns with the same data types and NULL settings, they need to be in the same file group and the new target table must be empty. See the page link above for more info on switching partitions.
[1]: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms191160(v=sql.105).aspx The column IDENTITY property may differ.
