Oracle Drop Partition
ALTER TABLE DROP PARTITION allows you to drop a
partition and its data. If you would like to drop the partition but keep
its data in the table, the Oracle patition must be merged into one of
the adjacent partitions.
If an Oracle partition is dropped and a row is
inserted that would have belonged to the Oracle dropped partition, the
row will be stored in the next higher partition. If the highest Oracle
partition is dropped, the insert will fail because the range of values
represented by the Oracle dropped partition is no longer valid for the
table.
The Oracle ALTER TABLE DROP PARTITION statement
will also drop the corresponding Oracle partitions in each local index
defined on table. The Oracle index partitions are dropped even if
they are marked as unusable.
If global indexes are defined on the table and
the Oracle partition you want to drop is not empty, dropping the Oracle
partition marks all the global, nonpartitioned indexes and all the
partitions of global partitioned Oracle indexes as unusable.
A table that contains only one Oracle partition
cannot be dropped. You must drop the table.
The following example of the Oracle ALTER TABLE
DROP PARTITION statement drops the Oracle partition jan98:
ALTER TABLE
sales DROP PARTITION jan98;
