Question

Hi lads
I’m trying to automatize a partitioning process here, and well ren into something odd.
Why wouldnt’the following work?

create table flp_aa (cdate date, value varchar2(255))
PCTUSED    0
PCTFREE    10
INITRANS   1
MAXTRANS   255
STORAGE    (
            INITIAL          64M
           )
LOGGING
PARTITION BY RANGE (cdate)
(  
  PARTITION flp_aa_1010 VALUES LESS THAN (last_day(to_date('20101101', 'YYYYMMDD')))
    NOLOGGING
    NOCOMPRESS
    PCTFREE    10
    INITRANS   1
    MAXTRANS   255
    STORAGE    (
                INITIAL          64M
                NEXT             512K
                MINEXTENTS       1
                MAXEXTENTS       UNLIMITED
                PCTINCREASE      0
                BUFFER_POOL      DEFAULT
                )
)

The idea is to use last_day(to_date('20101101', 'YYYYMMDD')) so each pretty partition ends on the last day of that month and everybody is happy. However I get an ORA-14019 when trying to execute that code…

[UPDATE]

Darn odd:

This work:

  (...)
  PARTITION flp_aa_1010 VALUES LESS THAN (to_date('20101101', 'YYYYMMDD'))
  (...)

This doesn’t work:

  (...)
  PARTITION flp_aa_1010 VALUES LESS THAN (last_day(to_date('20101101', 'YYYYMMDD')))
  (...)

And this does not again:

  (...)
  PPARTITION flp_aa_1010 VALUES LESS THAN to_date(last_day(to_date('201010','YYYYMM'))))
  (...)

What the duck? which class did I miss here?
Isn’t the output of all these functions the same?

could anyone enlighten me?

cheers

f.

Answer 1

As the link you posted says:

partition bound element must be one
of: string, datetime or interval
literal, number, or MAXVALUE

A function call (LAST_DAY) is not a string, datetime or interval
literal, number, or MAXVALUE. True, TO_DATE is a function call, but this is allowed as an exception because traditionally it was the only way to generate a DATE literal (you can now use the ANSI format DATE ‘2010-11-26’ but not a lot of people know that). See documentation.

However, at the point where you generate the value ‘20101101’, you could apply LAST_DAY and use the result instead of that – something like:

'... VALUES LESS THAN (' || TO_CHAR (LAST_DAY (...), 'YYYYMMDD') || ')...'