Improving the performance of a table scan

This example shows how a table might be partitioned to meet performance goals. Queries that scan whole tables and return a limited number of rows are good candidates for parallel performance. An example is this query containing group by:

select type, avg(price) 
    from titles
group by type

Here are the performance statistics and tuning goals:

Table size

48,000 pages

Access method

Table scan, 16K I/O

Serial response time

60 seconds

Target performance

6 seconds

The steps for configuring for parallel operation are:

In serial execution, 48,000 pages can be scanned in 60 seconds using 16K I/O. In parallel execution, each process scans 1 partition, approximately 4,800 pages, in about 6 seconds, again using 16K I/O.