Oracle Partitioning Option is a separately licensed option of Oracle Database that is only available with the Enterprise Edition of Oracle Database. The Partitioning option for Oracle Database 11g offers the widest array of partitioning methods available, including interval, reference, list, and range. Partitioning allows DBAs to split large tables into more manageable sub-tables, which improves database performance, data availability and manageability. Partitioning also goes hand and hand with Oracle’s Lifecycle Management strategy, which aligns the business value of information to cost-effective storage tiers for large data warehousing and transaction processing applications.
Some key benefits/advantages:
- Partitions can be stored in different tablespaces, which improves the manageability of data
- Partitioning allows DBA’s to work with smaller more manageable components
- Partitioning option lowers query times from minutes to seconds, which leads to faster performance
- Partitions can be added/ removed while users are working.
- DBAs can perform maintenance without having to bring down an entire table.
- Increases the availability of data
- Enables Information Lifecycle Management
Licensing:
- Oracle Partitioning option must be licensed separately from the Database Enterprise Edition licenses.
- Oracle Partitioning option must be licensed either by Named User Plus or by Processor.
- Oracle Partitioning option must match the number of licenses of the associated oracle Database enterprise Edition.
- A minimum of 25 Named user Plus Licenses per processor must be met.