Partition

(updated 3.12.2009 to deal with UPDATE GLOBAL INDEXES option)
When I decide to partition a table, I also need to consider whether to partition the indexes, and if so how. The easiest option is to locally partition the indexes.  I try to avoid globally partitioned indexes because they can become invalid when you do partition maintenance. However, where an index leads on a column other than the partitioning key, then you might have to scan all partitions of a locally partitioned index if you do not query by the partitioning column.  Sometimes, it is necessary to partition an index differently to the table, or not at all. However, I have found that there are some partition management operations that do not invalidate global indexes.