Abstract: Data partition is one of the critical issues deserving of being solved well in distributed database management systems. The issue is about how to split databases in applied systems into rational fragments （transparent to end user） so as to achieve the goals of reducing the cost of system processing, improving the power of parallel processing, and enhancing the autonomy of each node of the distributed environment. In this paper, the ways of partitioning relation are presented in brief and then the latest research work in the world on partitioning class in OODBS is surveyed.