Has anyone got a working system using the new 8.1 contraint_exclusion partitioning on OLTP tables?
Here is my situation.
The main system I administer is required by law to keep 7 years of data. Management wants to keep all 7 years online so the user community can access it whenever they want to. I am looking very hard at partitioning the data since the tables are already becoming very difficult to deal with at the 2-3 year point.
The main table of our system has a record number and a status. This is my problem table. The record number is a combination of a 2 digit year and a serial column. I have been thinking of partitioning the table based upon those two fields. From my research, 95% + of the records are in 2 status that are considered to be closed, the other 5% are the records that are being actively manipulated by the end user.
I have been thinking of partitioning our main table like this:
main_table_live (constraint status not in ('C','D); main_table_2003 (constraint rec_number < 040000000 and status in ('C','D')); main_table_2004 (constraint rec_number < 050000000 and rec_number > 039999999 and status in ('C','D')); main_table_2005 (constraint rec_number < 060000000 and rec_number > 049999999 and status in ('C','D')) main_table_2006 (constraint rec_number < 070000000 and rec_number > 059999999 and status in ('C','D')) main_table_2007 (constraint rec_number < 080000000 and rec_number > 069999999 and status in ('C','D'))
The problem I am having is how can you safely move records between main_table_live and one of the other partition tables? Obviously, this will have to happen as our users work the data and the records enter into on of the 2 closed statuses ('C' or 'D'). When the status is changed to C or D, I need to first move the record and run an update against the moved record to make sure all fields are updated and our auditing triggers are fired.
Also, is there a way to make foreign keys work with the partitioned table (i.e. can I create a foriegn key from a normal unpartitioned table to a table that has been partitioned where the key data may be in multiple partitions)?
