Oracle list partition table max value entries

Question

I am partitioning a table in Oracle 11g using a list partition. The list partition is based upon an arbitrary id which we are grouping.

For instance:

PARTITION BY LIST (id)
( PARTITION 1 VALUES (2345,7433,3857,2457,5757,3204) TABLESPACE T1

What is the maximum values that the partition values can take. Ie can 2345,7433,3857,2457,5757,3204 be extended infinitely or what is the max?

Answer 1

From the documentation:

The string comprising the list of values for each partition can be up to 4K bytes. The total number of values for all partitions cannot exceed 64K-1.

So there is no specific limit on the number of values in a single partition, as long as they fit into the 4K restriction - which you'd obviously hit before the overall 64K-1 limit.

(If you're grouping the IDs arbitrarily - which isn't quite what you said - then hash partitioning might be simpler that maintaining the value lists. Depends what you're actually doing though, and why.)