Allocation is done for each multi-tenant database object for each tenant, except when (optionally) set to not allocate. A storage object definition is created even if space for an object is not allocated. The space allocated for an object is referred to as a partition.

There are three types of multi-tenant database objects: tables, indexes defined for multi-tenant tables, and LOBs (CLOBs and BLOBs) defined for multi-tenant tables. As a unit, the database objects defined for a table are known as a table instance.