Query the data in the table. Update the table if the partition being maintained contains no row to update. Maintenance and reorganization operations will be greatly eased. However, the decision on how to partition and how to index implies a lot of forethought. If we have a look at performance, we understand that partitioning is extremely dependent on the queries which are going to be executed, and is therefore closely related to the functional side.
Compromises are therefore unavoidable.
Choices will be quite different, depending on the domain. There is no hard and fast rule, as there are so many possible combinations. One must test thoroughly to find the best compromises. Non-prefixed indexes must be avoided, as they require one access per index partition which impairs performance.