Hi there! I've actually worked with partitioning quite a bit. I've posted an article about some of the reasons to use partitioning, including some of the benefits and some things to be aware of. You can find that article here: http://sqlfool.com/2008/11/partitioning-101/[/url]
I followed that post with an example on how to use partitioning, including a partition swap example. You can find that code here: http://sqlfool.com/2008/11/102/[/url]