Re: Oracle partitioning

Kary wrote:
> All,
>
> I am working on a solution where a company is hosting a website
> (portal) where it has its dozen or so customers log in and run
> reports(ad-hoc and canned).
>
> Each customer will query his/her own data (no queries across
> customers). This is indeed the case and just for the sake of discussion
> let us also assume this situation will not change ( given that change
> is the only constant!).
>
> Would it make make sense for the hosting company to partition by
> customer then ? Is it possible and would it help to further partition
> by time period i.e say by month(inside of each customer partition).
>
> What are your thoughts on partitioning like above both from a
> performance standpoint and also from a maintenance standpoint.
>
> Thanks,
> KK.
>

The main factor when considering partitioning (aside from the not inconsiderable cost, since it is a separate license fee on top of Enterprise Edition) is scalability -- query performance, backups, archiving older data, index maintainance, and so on.

If your customer data sets are not very large, then partitioning won't add much value. If they are, then it will. How you partition has more to do with specific application requirements, for example you can't just assume without some analysis and testing that partitioning by customer or date is the best way to go. What are your customer service level agreements regarding performance, backups, scheduled outages, data retention?

Bottom line -- is partitioning going to add enough value that you can pass the extra cost along to your customers? If not, then don't do it.

-Mark Bole Received on Mon Aug 22 2005 - 14:09:32 CDT