Techniques are disclosed for expanding the concept of partitioning in variety of ways. In particular techniques are provided for performing multiple-dimension partitioning. In multiple-dimension partitioning, a database object is divided into partitions based on one criteria, and each of those resulting partitions is divided into sub-partitions based on a second criteria. The process of partitioning partitions based on different criteria may be repeated across any number of dimensions. Entirely different partitioning techniques may be used for each level of partitioning. The database server takes advantage of partitions when processing queries that include joins. In particular, techniques are provided for performing a full parallel partitioned-wise join, and a partial parallel partition-wise join. In a partial parallel partition-wise join, one of the join tables is statically partitioned on the join key and another join table is dynamically partitioned in a way that corresponds to the partition criteria of the statically partitioned table. In a full parallel partition-wise join, both of the tables involved in the join have already been statically partitioned based on the same criteria. The join operation is performed in parallel in a way that takes advantage of that static partitioning.