US Patent 7831590 Techniques for partitioning indexes

Techniques for partitioning indexes are provided. A predefined data type associated with a column of a database table is acquired. Column value statistics for the column are acquired. The values are analyzed to produce multiple partitions for the values. Each partition includes each of the values and each partition includes multiple groupings of the values. Also, each grouping of a particular partition includes a subset or range of the values. Furthermore, each grouping of a partition includes a same distribution for the values as other groupings of that partition. Each partition represents a potential partitioning index for the column and its values.