Building a Partitioned Primary Key index on a VLDB?

Fellow users,

I hope somebody here may have some advice for me.

Where I work, we've just bought a hot new server. We will merge two of our existing databases, and put them onto the new machine. There will be ~300Gb of data involved. At the same time, we're upgrading from Oracle 7 to Oracle 8.

On the old system, most of the data is in 50 similar tables, and accessed via a union view. During the migration, we wish to move the data into one large partitioned table.

For logistical reasons, we need to move the data before we begin building indexes. We wish to use an equipartitioned index for the primary key of the new table.

The problem is this: in my tests, I'm having difficulty finding a way to build the primary key index without doing a full table scan. If this weren't a primary key, I could begin by making all partitions of the index UNUSABLE, then rebuild the index one partition at a time. The problem I'm having is that Oracle seems to insist that all partitions of a Primary Key index be usable.

To recapitulate, I am seeking a way to build a primary key index, using an equipartitioned index, on a very large table, without doing a full table scan. I wish to build this index one partition at a time.

If any of you have any experience or insights you could share, I would love to hear from you.

thank you,

doid.

-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own Received on Tue Oct 06 1998 - 10:40:32 CDT