Techniques for creating and using partial indexes are provided. A partial index is an index that indexes one or more partitions of a partitioned table and does not index one or more other partitions of the partitioned table. Thus, if a partition of a partitioned table is rarely used, then an index may index all other partitions of the partitioned table or at least only those partitions that are written to or read from relatively frequently. Also, in preparation for loading data into a partition, indexing for the partition may be “turned off”, effectively making a full index a partial index. While the data is loaded into the partition, the partial index is still available for query processing. After the data is loaded into the partition, indexing for the partition is “turned on”, which causes the data in the partition to be indexed by the partial index.