We have a table that grows at a approximately 6.4 million rows / month that is partitioned, and we periodically (monthly) drop a partition. We have recently introduced a join table on the primary key of this table (with cascading deletes). This introduces problems with referential integrity where-in we can't drop the partition because the join table refers to rows inside it.

We've received advice to make our application code do it, but we felt this was a less than optimal solution.

I've since read this: <https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E11882_01/server.112/e25523/part_admin002.htm#i1007479> and it appears that they are recommending to first `DELETE FROM table partition (partitionID);` and then `ALTER TABLE table DROP PARTITION partitionID;`

We are worried about:

1. The processing load
2. The impact on the undo/redo logs

I'm wondering if someone has a better idea. Or can re-assure me as to this not being a bad idea.