Beginning Oracle Database 11g Administration From Novice to Professional

CHAPTER 7 PHYSICAL DATABASE DESIGN 143
Composite Partitioning
Oracle offers the ability to further divide a partition into subpartitions using different criteria;
this can make sense if a table is very large. In Listing 7-7, we first create one partition
for each month (using the interval partitioning method) and then create subpartitions for
each state.
Listing 7-7. Example of List Partitioning
Local and Global Indexes
Partitioning a table does not eliminate the need for any of its indexes. However, we must
make a design choice for each index; indexes on partitioned tables can be either local
or global. A local index is itself partitioned in exactly the same way as its table; one need
only specify the clause when creating the index to automatically create the necessary
partitions for the use of the index. Local indexes are most suitable when the query
specifies the partitioning criterion; they also promote partition independence; that is, they
preserve our ability to perform maintenance operations on a partition without impacting