exchange partition

Here is an odd bug that can lead to some nasty side effects when using the EXCHANGE PARTITION technique. It is probably there for a very long time, simply because it depends on the usage of virtual columns, and the basic technique of virtual columns was introduced way back in the Oracle 8i times with the introduction of Function Based Indexes.

The problem isn't the exchange partition operation itself, but the accompanying swap of object statistics information, in particular the column statistics.

Look the following sequence of DDL and DML commands and pay then special attention to the output for the column statistics before and after the EXCHANGE PARTITION operation: