Question

I have created four partitions in SQL Server using the following functions.

CREATE PARTITION FUNCTION fnYearsRT(DateTime)
AS RANGE RIGHT FOR VALUES
('01/01/2005', '01/01/2006', '01/01/2007', '01/01/2008');

CREATE PARTITION SCHEME date_partscheme
 AS PARTITION fnYearsRT
 TO (Filegroup1, Filegroup2, Filegroup3, Filegroup4,Filegroup5)

CREATE TABLE Sales.ReturnsArchive
  (
     ReturnID  int  IDENTITY NOT NULL, 
     ProductID  int  NOT NULL, 
     CustomerID  int  NOT NULL, 
     ReturnDate  datetime  NOT NULL,  
     ReturnReason  char(20)  NULL  
  ) 
 ON date_partscheme (ReturnDate)

After inserting data I have the following stats

Partition   COUNT
2       5151
3       19353
4       51237
5       45576

I want to merge partition 2 and 3 but I am unable to decide which range I should give in merge function.

Answer 1

You actually have 5 partition, not 4, the first one just appears to be empty. To merge partition 2 and 3 use the following code:

ALTER PARTITION FUNCTION 
    MERGE RANGE('01/01/2006')

This will give you the following ranges:

1. ~ to ’31/12/2004′
2. ’01/01/2005′ to ’31/12/2006′
3. ’01/01/2007′ to ’31/12/2007′
4. ’01/01/2008′ to ~