The following rules apply to altering the partitioning of a populated table or join index.
- You cannot alter a populated partitioned table to have no partitioning.
- You cannot alter a populated nonpartitioned table to have partitioning.
- You cannot alter the partitioning of a populated partitioned table to have a new partitioning using a PARTITION BY clause.
- You cannot alter the partitioning of a populated partitioned table to have a new partitioning with DROP RANGE clauses, ADD RANGE clauses, or both unless the new partitioning expressions are defined using DROP RANGE#L n and ADD RANGE#L n clauses that do not drop ranges other than from the beginning or end of the range sequence with at least one remaining range, and then does not add ranges between the resulting beginning and end of the ranges.
If the table has multilevel partitioning and the modification of a partitioning expression includes dropping the NO RANGE or UNKNOWN partitions, the partitioning expression must not have been modified previously.
The resulting number of partitions for a level must be between 1 and the maximum defined for that level.