Patent attributes
A database engine performs row filtering operations concurrently with performing database object partition maintenance operations. The filtering operations do not incur the high processing costs of database delete or purge operations that would incur per row costs for logging, locking, etc. The partitioning and filtering operations are specified in multiple clauses of a single database language statement. The clauses of the statement are executed concurrently. A method implementation receives a database language statement that comprises a partitioning operation specification as well as a filtering operation specification that includes a logical predicate for determining whether or not to filter-out predicate-matching entries when forming the resulting partitioned target database object. While processing the partitioning operations, the method discards entries taken from the source database object whenever the entry corresponds to the logical predicate. The target database object contains some entries that derive from the source, but does not contain the discarded entries.