Is "alter table...drop partition...update global indexes" an online operation..?

Oracle 10.2.0.1 EE on RHEL 4

We have a very large table which is partitioned by range and then further sub partitioned by list. All indexes have been created as locally partitioned but the primary key is a non-partitioned (global) index.

When dropping an old partition I am planning on using the 'update global indexes' clause in order to avoid invalidating the primary key index and having to rebuild it.

My question is... will the primary key index be useable while this operation is in progress...?

What about the read consistency of the statement - its effectivly a DDL statement. Will users still be able to see index entries for the dropped rows up until the drop statement completes..?

Can the table (and primary key index) be updated while the drop is occuring..?

Thanks

Matt Received on Wed Apr 02 2008 - 00:20:35 CDT