A method, system and computer program product for handling an increase in transactional data load without requiring the relocation of preexisting data. A range of attribute values and identifications of associated shards are stored in a data structure. In response to adding a new shard, the data structure is updated by associating a range of attribute values to the added shard while maintaining the same range of attribute values being associated with one of the pre-existing shards. As a result, the new data assigned within this range of attribute values will be stored in the newly added shard while the older data assigned within this range of attribute values will continue to be stored in one of the preexisting shards. In this manner, an increase in transactional data load can be handled by adding a new shard without requiring the relocation of preexisting data.