Re: Partitioning wiki page

> On Tue, 2008-12-16 at 21:48 -0500, Emmanuel Cecchet wrote:
> I'm glad you're looking to work on it. I have a few comments.
> Others have suggested different syntax also, so you need to come up with
> arguments in favour of this particular syntax.

I am not a fan of the proposed syntax.  It is conceptually similar to
what we already do with constraints, but invents a whole new syntax to
no obvious benefit that I can see.  I think we would do well to look
at what other systems besides Oracle do, as well as considering any
newer ideas Oracle may have introduced.  Perhaps this would be a good
thing to add to the Wiki page - instead of saying, this is the design,
say, here are some different possibilities, what do we like?

> Oracle's new interval partitioning sounds great, but it ignores the
> reality that most data varies considerably over time, either growing or
> fluctuating. I much prefer the idea of a size-equalized partitioning
> scheme, as implemented by Coppereye's Greenwich. That method gives equal

Sometimes (though certainly not always), the structure of the
underling data makes interval partitioning a win, as when for example
you are accumulating transactions that are billed at the end of each
month.  If you do a lot of queries on the open transactions for the
current month, you want to make sure that there's a partition break at
the start of the month so that you're not unnecessarily scanning some
of the previous month's entries.

...Robert