Is "alter table...drop partition...update global indexes" an online operation..?

[mc...@hotmail.com]

Oracle 10.2.0.1 EE on RHEL 4

We have a very large table which is partitioned by range and then
further sub partitioned by list. All indexes have been created as
locally partitioned but the primary key is a non-partitioned (global)
index.

When dropping an old partition I am planning on using the 'update
global indexes' clause in order to avoid invalidating the primary key
index and having to rebuild it.

My question is... will the primary key index be useable while this
operation is in progress...?

What about the read consistency of the statement - its effectivly a
DDL statement. Will users still be able to see index entries for the
dropped rows up until the drop statement completes..?

Can the table (and primary key index) be updated while the drop is
occuring..?

Thanks

Matt

[madhus...@gmail.com]

Yes - it's a safe online operation but can be slow. The index would be
in usable state all along. I have not tested as to until what time the
users can see the index entries. At our place we do it monthly as part
of archiving, and ours is a high activity database.

-Madhu Sreeram