Partition projection eliminates the need for frequent metadata lookups or explicit partition registration in the AWS Glue Data Catalog. By defining a date range in your table's properties (for example, projection.enabled=true, projection.order_date.type=DATE, projection.order_date.range=2020/01/01,NOW, and the appropriate format), Athena will calculate partitions on-the-fly. This both speeds up queries (avoiding catalog calls for thousands of partitions) and removes the need for any external partition-management jobs.