Re: debunking partitioning

On 3 Dec 2002 14:31:19 -0800, mikharakiri_at_yahoo.com (Mikito Harakiri) wrote:

>My question is if huge tables management can't be done by standard
>means.
>
><2>Partitioning improves query performance. In many cases, the results
>of a query can be achieved by accessing a subset of partitions, rather
>than the entire table. For some queries, this technique (called
>partition pruning) can provide order-of-magnitude gains in
>performance.</2>
>
>If I feel that range scan is fast, I create an index (providing the
>same "order-of-magnitude" gains). No need in spoecial facility like
>prunning.
>
><3>Partitioning can significantly reduce the impact of scheduled
>downtime for maintenance operations.</3>
>
>I don't see how bullet #3 is different from #1.
>
><4>Partition independence for partition maintenance operations lets
>you perform concurrent maintenance operations on different partitions
>of the same table or index.</4>
>
>But parallel hints were designed for that purpose too!
>
><4>You can also run concurrent SELECT and DML operations against
>partitions that are unaffected by maintenance operations.</4>
>
>Concurrency protocols are supposed to to isolate parts of the table
>affected by transaction. Those protocols could digest as much
>concurrency as data consistency allows. Is the bullet implying that
>those protocols are not effective? They certainly are more general
>than naive transaction isolation through partitioning.
>
><5> Partitioning increases the availability of mission-critical
>databases if critical tables and indexes are divided into partitions
>to reduce the maintenance windows, recovery times, and impact of
>failures. </5>
>
>This is reiteration of #4 and #1.
>
><5> Partitioning can be implemented without requiring any
>modifications to your applications. For example, you could convert a
>nonpartitioned table to a partitioned table without needing to modify
>any of the SELECT statements or DML statements which access that
>table. You do not need to rewrite your application code to take
>advantage of partitioning. </5>
>
>Just as an aside, since partition names are allowed in the queries,
>stupid users started to use them. Therefore, in practice applications
>are dependent upon partitions!

Why don't you just submit your rant as an iTar. I guess,you don't have a support contract? Obviously you also have zero idea of the issues involved with a VLDB. In an unpartitioned large table any maintenance, any insert, any update, any delete will potentially affect the complete table, index etc.

Sybrand Bakker, Senior Oracle DBA

To reply remove -verwijderdit from my e-mail address Received on Tue Dec 03 2002 - 17:23:39 CST