US Patent 11354316 Systems and methods for selective scanning of external partitions

Disclosed herein are systems and methods for selective scanning of external partitions. In an embodiment, a database platform receives a query directed at least in part to an external table stored on an external data storage platform. The external table is partitioned into partitions corresponding to storage locations in the external data storage platform. The database platform prunes, using external-table metadata that is stored by the database platform and that maps the partitions of the external table to the storage locations in the external data storage platform, those partitions that do not potentially contain data that satisfies the query. The database platform identifies data that satisfies the query by scanning any one or more of the partitions of the external table that were not pruned, and responds to the query at least in part with the identified data that satisfies the query.