Partitions, when to start ?

Good folks:

I'll soon be working with a database that will have a handful (under 20) of tables with row counts in the low millions, from 4 on average to some that will be around 8.

The total DB size will probably be around 24 Gigs.

I'm investigating using partitioned tables for the large tables, but I spoke to some one at Oracle who said this was too small a database to get any benefit.

Does anyone out there have any personal experience with performance gains in using partitioned tables, and how large a table has to be before it's wothwhile partitioning it?

Oh, one bit of interesting information that I got was that once you partition a table you can't alter the partition key of a row so that it no longer fits within the partition. So, lets say you partition a table based on a column called BIRTH_DAY. Now you can't alter that column.

The ability to automatically migrate a row from one partition to another may be introduced in 8i according to my source. :)

Thanks in advance, and best regards,

Nigel

-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own Received on Fri Feb 26 1999 - 17:14:48 CST