alt Hacker News> A partition can’t be deleted until every single piece of data it stores is no longer needed. This is appropriate for some systems, like message queues, where data is needed for a predictable amount of time. However, it’s not appropriate for a workflow system that supports long-running workflows.
If most workflows complete within a few days, we could explicitly copy the long running items forward and then reclaim the entire partition. Sacrificing an extremely good technical solution because we can't be bothered to normalize <1% of use cases seems quite hasty, especially when we consider where this rejection of technological simplicity often takes us.
Yes, but "DELETE" is the basic, built-in tool for deleting some rows from a database. Maintaining partitions, and migrating long-lived data from old partitions is a workaround.
There is nothing wrong with using the partition solution -- it might be a good solution to your problem. But it certainly isn't a case of "rejecting technological simplicity" if someone chooses to use DELETE instead.