Jeff Moden (8/8/2014)
I have to get to work but here's a 60,000 ft view of what I would do...1. DO A FULL BACKUP!!!!!!!!!!!!
2. MAKE SURE POINT-IN-TIME BACKUPS ARE BEING TAKEN111!
3. Create an empty identical table.
4. Do a cascaded-rename (takes about 63ms) to rename the old table to something else and rename the new table to what the old table was named. This new table will continue in the place of the old table.
5. Insert the desired old rows from the old table into the new table using a WHILE loop that does it in 3 million row batchs (most systems will reach a tipping point shortly after that so I wouldn't go much higher if at all).
6. When you're absolutely sure that everything worked correctly, DROP the old table.
Thanks Jeff
Backup is done and point in time backups are being taken
I will follow your suggestion. I believe 63 ms would mean a very slight downtime might be faced by some trigger or end user application.
By the way the table is hit by a trigger on another table so the ultimate end user might not face anything.
Any further suggestion about the downtime ? I mean what should I be expecting during that 63 ms ?
Thanks again.