Hi,

In InnoDB, dropping a table is blocking and expensive. In my experience, this is about 1 second of downtime per 100GB buffer pool. Dropping a partitioned table does this sequentially and is blocking in the entire operation.

A work-around for this is possible by dropping each partition. However, in hash and key partitioned tables the partitions do not (seam to, from SHOW CREATE TABLE) have a name. When using EXPLAIN PARTITIONS I do see that the partitions have names. Dropping the partition does not help me any further, though:
MariaDB 16:48 world> alter table employees drop partition p0;
ERROR 1512 (HY000): DROP PARTITION can only be used on RANGE/LIST partitions

For this partition it should be possible for this purpose.

Thanks,
Michaël