Some common business queries generally require a full-table scan of a large table even though it's predictable that a fairly small percentage of the rows qualify. One example of such a query is a trend analysis application that compares current month sales to the previous month, or to the same month of the previous year, using a table with several years of sales detail.

Carefully chosen partitioning expressions can result in partial-table scans instead of full-table scans with dramatic improvements in resource consumption and elapsed time (elapsed time decreases of 99% or more are possible). Batch insert and update times may also be improved when a partitioning column matches the arrival pattern of the data (elapsed time decreases of 90% or more are possible).

Learn more about how single-level partitioned primary indexes provide an opportunity to significantly improve performance of certain queries and to improve the performance of high-volume insert, update, and delete operations.