Regular Index vs. Partitions (The Best Of Both Worlds)

When asking for requests and suggestions on what I could cover in the blog, Brian Tkatch asked “When is a partition better than just a regular index ?”

As it’s a very good question, I thought I might spend a few moments attempting to provide some kind of meaningful answer.

The first point I would make however, is that indexes and partitions are not at all mutually exclusive. A table of course could very well benefit from being both partitioned and indexed. Most partitioned tables have indexes and indeed indexes can in turn be partitioned.

The second point I would make is that there are two key advantages or reasons why it might be beneficial to partition a segment. They are:

1. Better Manageability
2. Better Performance

This post can be viewed as being but an introduction to the potential performance benefits of partitioned segments. I will leave the topic of better manageability for another time.

The point of Brian’s question is when can the performance benefits available to partitioned segments out perform and be a better option than that of a possible associated index.

As I’ve discussed a number of times, there are no magic numbers or ratios as to when an index is the most appropriate and cost effective access path. If fact, the link shows a theoretical example of when a Full Table Scan (FTS) is by far the cheaper option when selecting just 1% of data. Generally speaking though, the higher the percentage of returned rows, the more likely a FTS is going to be the more efficient option.

However, a Full Table Scan is just that, a FULL Table Scan. Oracle needs to read the entire table, each and every block below the segment High Water Mark. So if a query needed to retrieve just 5% of the data, it’s quite likely it would perform a FTS because it’s possibly a cheaper and less costly alternative than using an associated index (the above link explains why) but it would need to access 100% of the table to do so. That means it would need to effectively access 95% of the data and simply just throw away the rows so it can access the 5% of data it actually requires in a more efficient manner than possible using an index access path.

That’s potentially (say) 95% of the work and resources for no real reason other than Oracle has no choice but to access all the data when performing a FTS. That’s potentially 95% of wasted resources, 95% of wasted effort. Yes, a TFS might be more efficient than using an index but accessing unnecessarily say 95% of data sounds rather costly nonetheless.

Wouldn’t it be nice if somehow we could get the benefits of performing a FTS (multiblock reads, reading a specific block just the once, etc.) but only read the say 5% of the data that we were actually interested in (or something significantly less than the 100%)? Somehow combine the benefits of a FTS with the benefits provided by an index, that being only needing to access data that is of direct interest.

Enter Partitioning.

Partitioning provides Oracle with another level of granularity (or levels of granularity with composite partitions) when accessing a table. It’s no longer an question of using an index or reading the entire table. Oracle can now either use an index, access the entire table or with partitioning access just those partitions (or bits) of a table that can only possibly contain data of interest.

By partitioning a table, Oracle knows that data belonging to the partitioning keys must belong in a specific partition. The logical table is effectively broken down into multiple physical segments with each partition segment containing only data associated with the partitioning keys or columns.

If the say 5% of data that’s of interest only logically resides in the one or whatever number of partitions, then there’s no need for Oracle to access the data in all the other partitions, containing the other say 95% of unwanted data. The Cost based Optimizer (CBO) can automatically take advantage of “partition pruning” and only needs to access the partition or those partitions that only can contain the data of interest.

Oracle can now potentially perform a so-called “FTS” of the table, but only actually accesses and reads the 5% (or significantly less than the 100%) of data that’s potentially of direct interest by accessing just those partitions it needs to.

At a simplistic level, indexes are best when accessing a relatively “small” amount of data. A FTS is best when accessing a relatively “large” amount of the data and partitions can be extremely useful and beneficial when accessing an amount of data somewhere between the two. As such, partitioning is more likely to be beneficial in a Data Warehouse or Reporting environment where accessing a relatively high percentage of data is common.

This demo of indexes vs. a FTS vs. partition pruning shows how a FTS outperforms an index when accessing approximately 1/8 of data in a table but an appropriately partitioned table out performs both options.

More on partitioning in the future.