Oracle - How to best implement partitioning with a conditional clause - sql

Question

Our system has many tables that require partitioning to support data maintenance. Let's talk about one table to simplify the question. If the data in a table hits 100GB, then the OLTP system starts to slow down. We recommend to customers to move the data from the OLTP system to the OLAP system. We use partitioning by year or month (based on data insertion rates) to facilitate this move.
Here is a sample of a table definition:
create table myPartionedTable
(
object_id number ,
object_type varchar2(18),
RETIREDTIMESTAMP timestamp
)
partition by range (RETIREDTIMESTAMP)
(
partition WM_2010 values less than(TO_DATE('01/01/2011','MM/DD/YYYY')),
partition WM_2011 values less than(TO_DATE('01/01/2012','MM/DD/YYYY')),
partition WM_2012 values less than(TO_DATE('01/01/2013','MM/DD/YYYY')),
partition WM_2013 values less than(TO_DATE('01/01/2014','MM/DD/YYYY')),
partition WM_2014 values less than(TO_DATE('01/01/2015','MM/DD/YYYY')),
partition WM_ACTIVE values less than(MAXVALUE)
)
tablespace MYDATE;
The important point is that the data needs to be retained in the WM_ACTIVE partition till the data is deemed RETIRED. Once retired, the data moves to the appropriate partition and is then eligible for PARTITION_MOVE out of OLTP and into OLAP.
Is this a good approach? Is there a better approach for managing this list of requirements?

Answer 1

Interval partitioning may help. Oracle can automatically create partitions as needed.
There may not be a need to worry about active vs. inactive since it's easy to use the smallest range for all partitions.
create table myPartionedTable
(
object_id number ,
object_type varchar2(18),
RETIREDTIMESTAMP timestamp
)
partition by range (RETIREDTIMESTAMP) INTERVAL(NUMTOYMINTERVAL(1, 'MONTH'))
(
--You still need to specify the lowest possible partition.
partition WM_2010 values less than(date '2011-01-01')
);