Message-ID: <4255299B.3080101@archonet.com>
Date: Thu, 07 Apr 2005 13:37:47 +0100
From: Richard Huxton <dev@archonet.com>
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To: Sean Davis <sdavis2@mail.nih.gov>
Cc: 'PostgreSQL' <pgsql-sql@postgresql.org>, dpandey@secf.com
Subject: Re: Table PARTITION
References: <20050407114136.17B7E53AA5@svr1.postgresql.org>
	<42552244.5050603@archonet.com>
	<e5f9c6fea13bb95521003dbdb65ad5f2@mail.nih.gov>
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Sean Davis wrote:
> This is a totally selfish question, but IF someone has a few minutes, 
> could he/she explain why table partitioning is such an important tool?

Say you have a large log-table, you could partition it by month. If most 
queries only search the last month or two, a lot of your partitioned 
data could be moved to cheaper/slower disks (via tablespaces).

After (say) 24 months, you can start dropping the oldest partitions, and 
this should take place without affecting any other partitions.

How you partition your data depends on how you plan to access it. If you 
don't query your log-tables by date there's not much point in 
partitioning by date.
--
   Richard Huxton
   Archonet Ltd