Oracle 8i partioning questions

Dear oracle gurus,

Until now we were using Oracle 8i standard. I had a table <MyTable> created via CREATE TABLE..statement. It has many 100,000 rows of data. Now we upgraded to Enterprise version. Now i inetnd to use the partitioning option and partition this table MyTable

Can i retain MyTable definition as it is and from my application call 'ALTER TABLE MyTable ADD PARTITION <partname> VALUES LESS THAN ..)

I want to dynamically add partitions. So any new data that gets inserted into table goes into the appropriate partition as per definition.

What about the old data that already existed ??? will it get adjusted into appropriate parts when alter table is called. What about that data that cannot fit into any partition ??? is there like a default part that these rows get into ???

I intend to use range partioning on a DATE column. Kind of create every day/daily partitions. So what happens the old data that was inserted prior to partitioning

What does it mean to drop partition ?? is it like drop a table and and all the data vanishes ???

-thx,
avsrk Received on Thu Mar 27 2003 - 23:01:21 CET