Using Analytical NTILE() Function

I find it hard to remember the syntax of analytical functions, but this one - NTILE()- I came across today on Tom Kyte's site is easy to use and very useful

As Tom puts it, its a "do-it-yourself parallelism". Its as if your table was partitioned and you were only interested in one portion of it.

Lets use user_tables which we are all familiar with. Suppose I want to get a list of the oldest analysed tables.

SELECT table_name
FROM
(SELECT table_name,
last_analyzed,
ntile(6) over
(ORDER BY last_analyzed) nt
FROM user_tables)
WHERE nt=1