partitioning questions

Hello,

We are planning to move to Oracle 9.2 on as-yet-undecided platform
(probably red hat linux on ibm hardware).

We finally pursuaded management to purchase the partitioning license, and I have some questions on partitioning:

Scenario:
Range-Partition tableA on a service_date field by year; Range-Partition tableB on a posted_date field by year; These tables are frequently joined using a separate field called charge_id, a surrogate key.

Queries against these tables usually include some sort of date filter, join on the charge_id field, and are done in parallel.

1. Would this configuration promote the use of partition-wise joins between tableA and tableB by the optimizer?
2. Would it be better to partition the tables (either range or hash) by the join field, charge_id?
3. If we range-partition by date, subpartition by hash (charge_id), would queries that do not reference the date field, but do join the tables by charge_id still benefit?
4. Is it more expensive, less expensive, or about equal to do a full table scan on a partitioned table vs the same table non-partitioned?

As always, thanks to any responders.
becker.bill_at_marshfieldclinic.org

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