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Create Table

CREATE [EXTERNAL] TABLE [IF NOT EXISTS] [db_name.]table_name
  [(col_name data_type [COMMENT col_comment], ...)]
  [COMMENT table_comment]
  [PARTITIONED BY (col_name data_type [COMMENT col_comment], ...)]
  [CLUSTERED BY (col_name, col_name, ...) [SORTED BY (col_name [ASC|DESC], ...)] INTO num_buckets BUCKETS]
  [SKEWED BY (col_name, col_name, ...) ON ([(col_value, col_value, ...), ...|col_value, col_value, ...]) (Note: onlyOnly available starting with Hive 0.10.0)]
  [
   [ROW FORMAT row_format] [STORED AS file_format]
   | STORED BY 'storage.handler.class.name' [WITH SERDEPROPERTIES (...)]  (Note: onlyOnly available starting with Hive 0.6.0)
  ]
  [LOCATION hdfs_path]
  [TBLPROPERTIES (property_name=property_value, ...)]  (Note: onlyOnly available starting with Hive 0.6.0)
  [AS select_statement]  (Note: this feature is only Only available starting with Hive 0.5.0, and is not supported when creating external tables.)

CREATE [EXTERNAL] TABLE [IF NOT EXISTS] [db_name.]table_name
  LIKE existing_table_or_view_name
  [LOCATION hdfs_path]

data_type
  : primitive_type
  | array_type
  | map_type
  | struct_type
  | union_type (Note: Only available starting with Hive 0.7.0) - needs documentation

primitive_type
  : TINYINT
  | SMALLINT
  | INT
  | BIGINT
  | BOOLEAN
  | FLOAT
  | DOUBLE
  | STRING
  | BINARY (Note: Only available starting with Hive 0.8.0)
  | TIMESTAMP (Note: Only available starting with Hive 0.8.0)
  | DECIMAL (Note: Only available starting with Hive 0.11.0)
  | DECIMAL(precision, scale) (Note: Only available starting with Hive 0.13.0)
  | VARCHAR (Note: Only available starting with Hive 0.12.0)

array_type
  : ARRAY < data_type >

map_type
  : MAP < primitive_type, data_type >

struct_type
  : STRUCT < col_name : data_type [COMMENT col_comment], ...>

union_type
   : UNIONTYPE < data_type, data_type, ... > (Note: Only available starting with Hive 0.7.0)

row_format
  : DELIMITED [FIELDS TERMINATED BY char [ESCAPED BY char]] [COLLECTION ITEMS TERMINATED BY char]
        [MAP KEYS TERMINATED BY char] [LINES TERMINATED BY char]
  | SERDE serde_name [WITH SERDEPROPERTIES (property_name=property_value, property_name=property_value, ...)]

file_format:
  : SEQUENCEFILE
  | TEXTFILE
  | RCFILE     (Note: onlyOnly available starting with Hive 0.6.0)
  | ORC        (Note: onlyOnly available starting with Hive 0.11.0)
  | INPUTFORMAT input_format_classname OUTPUTFORMAT output_format_classname

CREATE TABLE creates a table with the given name. An error is thrown if a table or view with the same name already exists. You can use IF NOT EXISTS to skip the error.

See Type System and Hive Data Types for details about the primitive and complex data types.

Row Format, Storage Format, and SerDe

You can create tables with custom SerDe or using native SerDe. A native SerDe is used if ROW FORMAT is not specified or ROW FORMAT DELIMITED is specified. You can use the DELIMITED clause to read delimited files, you can enable escaping for the delimiter characters by using 'ESCAPED BY' clause (e.g. ESCAPED BY '\') (escaping is needed if you want to work with data that can contain these delimiter chars). Use the SERDE clause to create a table with custom SerDe. Refer to SerDe section of the User Guide for more information on SerDe.

You must specify a list of columns for tables that use a native SerDe. Refer to the Types part of the User Guide for the allowable column types. A list of columns for tables that use a custom SerDe may be specified but Hive will query the SerDe to determine the actual list of columns for this table.

Use STORED AS TEXTFILE if the data needs to be stored as plain text files.

Use STORED AS SEQUENCEFILE if the data needs to be compressed. Please read more about CompressedStorage if you are planning to keep data compressed in your Hive tables.

Use INPUTFORMAT and OUTPUTFORMAT in the file_format to specify the name of a corresponding InputFormat and OutputFormat class as a string literal, for example, 'org.apache.hadoop.hive.contrib.fileformat.base64.Base64TextInputFormat'. For LZO compression, the values to use are 'INPUTFORMAT "com.hadoop.mapred.DeprecatedLzoTextInputFormat" OUTPUTFORMAT "org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.io.HiveIgnoreKeyTextOutputFormat"' (see LZO Compression).

Use STORED BY to create a non-native table, for example in HBase. See StorageHandlers for more information on this option.

For details about SerDes, see:

• Hive SerDe
• SerDe
• HCatalog Storage Formats

Partitioned Tables

Partitioned tables can be created using the PARTITIONED BY clause. A table can have one or more partition columns and a separate data directory is created for each distinct value combination in the partition columns. Further, tables or partitions can be bucketed using CLUSTERED BY columns, and data can be sorted within that bucket via SORT BY columns. This can improve performance on certain kinds of queries.

If, when creating a partitioned table, you get this error: "FAILED: Error in semantic analysis: Column repeated in partitioning columns," it means you are trying to include the partitioned column in the data of the table itself. You probably really do have the column defined. However, the partition you create makes a pseudocolumn on which you can query, so you must rename your table column to something else (that users should not query on!).

Here is an example. Suppose your original table was this:

id     int,
date   date,
name   varchar

Now you want to partition on date. Your Hive definition would be this:

create table table_name (
  id                int,
  dtDontQuery       string,
  name              string
)
partitioned by (date string)

Now your users will still query on "where date = '...'" but the 2nd column will be the original values.

Table names and column names are case insensitive but SerDe and property names are case sensitive. Table and column comments are string literals (single-quoted). The TBLPROPERTIES clause allows you to tag the table definition with your own metadata key/value pairs.

Here's an example statement to create a table:

CREATE TABLE page_view(viewTime INT, userid BIGINT,
     page_url STRING, referrer_url STRING,
     ip STRING COMMENT 'IP Address of the User')
 COMMENT 'This is the page view table'
 PARTITIONED BY(dt STRING, country STRING)
 STORED AS SEQUENCEFILE;

The statement above creates the page_view table with viewTime, userid, page_url, referrer_url, and ip columns (including comments). The table is also partitioned and data is stored in sequence files. The data format in the files is assumed to be field-delimited by ctrl-A and row-delimited by newline.

CREATE TABLE page_view(viewTime INT, userid BIGINT,
     page_url STRING, referrer_url STRING,
     ip STRING COMMENT 'IP Address of the User')
 COMMENT 'This is the page view table'
 PARTITIONED BY(dt STRING, country STRING)
 ROW FORMAT DELIMITED
   FIELDS TERMINATED BY '\001'
STORED AS SEQUENCEFILE;

The above statement lets you create the same table as the previous table.

In the previous examples the data is stored in <hive.metastore.warehouse.dir>/page_view. Specify a value for the key hive.metastore.warehouse.dir in Hive config file hive-site.xml.

External Tables

The EXTERNAL keyword lets you create a table and provide a LOCATION so that Hive does not use a default location for this table. This comes in handy if you already have data generated. When dropping an EXTERNAL table, data in the table is NOT deleted from the file system.

An EXTERNAL table points to any HDFS location for its storage, rather than being stored in a folder specified by the configuration property hive.metastore.warehouse.dir.

CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE page_view(viewTime INT, userid BIGINT,
     page_url STRING, referrer_url STRING,
     ip STRING COMMENT 'IP Address of the User',
     country STRING COMMENT 'country of origination')
 COMMENT 'This is the staging page view table'
 ROW FORMAT DELIMITED FIELDS TERMINATED BY '\054'
 STORED AS TEXTFILE
 LOCATION '<hdfs_location>';

You can use the above statement to create a page_view table which points to any hdfs location for its storage. But you still have to make sure that the data is delimited as specified in the CREATE statement above.

Create Table As Select (CTAS)

Tables can also be created and populated by the results of a query in one create-table-as-select (CTAS) statement. The table created by CTAS is atomic, meaning that the table is not seen by other users until all the query results are populated. So other users will either see the table with the complete results of the query or will not see the table at all.

There are two parts in CTAS, the SELECT part can be any SELECT statement supported by HiveQL. The CREATE part of the CTAS takes the resulting schema from the SELECT part and creates the target table with other table properties such as the SerDe and storage format.

CTAS has two restrictions:

• The target table cannot be a partitioned table.
• The target table cannot be an external table.

Example:

CREATE TABLE new_key_value_store
   ROW FORMAT SERDE "org.apache.hadoop.hive.serde2.columnar.ColumnarSerDe"
   STORED AS RCFile
   AS
SELECT (key % 1024) new_key, concat(key, value) key_value_pair
FROM key_value_store
SORT BY new_key, key_value_pair;

The above CTAS statement creates the target table new_key_value_store with the schema (new_key DOUBLE, key_value_pair STRING) derived from the results of the SELECT statement. If the SELECT statement does not specify column aliases, the column names will be automatically assigned to _col0, _col1, and _col2 etc. In addition, the new target table is created using a specific SerDe and a storage format independent of the source tables in the SELECT statement.

Being able to select data from one table to another is one of the most powerful features of Hive. Hive handles the conversion of the data from the source format to the destination format as the query is being executed.

Create Table Like

The LIKE form of CREATE TABLE allows you to copy an existing table definition exactly (without copying its data). In contrast to CTAS, the statement below creates a new empty_key_value_store table whose definition exactly matches the existing key_value_store in all particulars other than table name. The new table contains no rows.

CREATE TABLE empty_key_value_store
LIKE key_value_store;

Before Hive 0.8.0, CREATE TABLE LIKE view_name would make a copy of the view. In Hive 0.8.0 and later releases, CREATE TABLE LIKE view_name creates a table by adopting the schema of view_name (fields and partition columns) using defaults for SerDe and file formats.

Bucketed Sorted Tables

CREATE TABLE page_view(viewTime INT, userid BIGINT,
     page_url STRING, referrer_url STRING,
     ip STRING COMMENT 'IP Address of the User')
 COMMENT 'This is the page view table'
 PARTITIONED BY(dt STRING, country STRING)
 CLUSTERED BY(userid) SORTED BY(viewTime) INTO 32 BUCKETS
 ROW FORMAT DELIMITED
   FIELDS TERMINATED BY '\001'
   COLLECTION ITEMS TERMINATED BY '\002'
   MAP KEYS TERMINATED BY '\003'
 STORED AS SEQUENCEFILE;

In the example above, the page_view table is bucketed (clustered by) userid and within each bucket the data is sorted in increasing order of viewTime. Such an organization allows the user to do efficient sampling on the clustered column - in this case userid. The sorting property allows internal operators to take advantage of the better-known data structure while evaluating queries, also increasing efficiency. MAP KEYS and COLLECTION ITEMS keywords can be used if any of the columns are lists or maps.

The CLUSTERED BY and SORTED BY creation commands do not affect how data is inserted into a table – only how it is read. This means that users must be careful to insert data correctly by specifying the number of reducers to be equal to the number of buckets, and using CLUSTER BY and SORT BY commands in their query.

There is also an example of creating and populating bucketed tables.

Skewed Tables

This feature can be used to improve performance for tables where one or more columns have skewed values. By specifying the values that appear very often (heavy skew) Hive will split those out into separate files automatically and take this fact into account during queries so that it can skip (or include) whole files if possible.

This can be specified on a per-table level during table creation.

This is an example where we have one column with three skewed values:

CREATE TABLE list_bucket_single (key STRING, value STRING) SKEWED BY (key) ON (1,5,6);

And here is an example of a table with two skewed columns:

CREATE TABLE list_bucket_multiple (col1 STRING, col2 int, col3 STRING) SKEWED BY (col1, col2) ON (('s1',1), ('s3',3), ('s13',13), ('s78',78));

Drop Table

DROP TABLE [IF EXISTS] table_name

DROP TABLE removes metadata and data for this table. The data is actually moved to the .Trash/Current directory if Trash is configured. The metadata is completely lost.

When dropping an EXTERNAL table, data in the table will NOT be deleted from the file system.

When dropping a table referenced by views, no warning is given (the views are left dangling as invalid and must be dropped or recreated by the user).

See the next section on ALTER TABLE for how to drop partitions.

Otherwise, the table information is removed from the metastore and the raw data is removed as if by 'hadoop dfs -rm'. In many cases, this results in the table data being moved into the user's .Trash folder in their home directory; users who mistakenly DROP TABLEs mistakenly may thus be able to recover their lost data by re-creating a table with the same schema, re-creating any necessary partitions, and then moving the data back into place manually using Hadoop. This solution is subject to change over time or across installations as it relies on the underlying implementation; users are strongly encouraged not to drop tables capriciously.

In Hive 0.7.0 or later, DROP returns an error if the table doesn't exist, unless IF EXISTS is specified or the configuration variable hive.exec.drop.ignorenonexistent is set to true.

Truncate Table

TRUNCATE TABLE table_name [PARTITION partition_spec];

partition_spec:
  : (partition_col = partition_col_value, partition_col = partiton_col_value, ...)

Removes all rows from a table or partition(s). Currently target table should be native/managed table or exception will be thrown. User can specify partial partition_spec for truncating multiple partitions at once and omitting partition_spec will truncate all partitions in the table.

Alter table statements enable you to change the structure of an existing table. You can add columns/partitions, change SerDe, add table and SerDe properties, or rename the table itself. Similarly, alter table partition statements allow you change the properties of a specific partition in the named table.

Alter Table

Rename Table

ALTER TABLE table_name RENAME TO new_table_name

This statement lets you change the name of a table to a different name.

As of version 0.6, a rename on a managed table moves its HDFS location as well. (Older Hive versions just renamed the table in the metastore without moving the HDFS location.)

Alter Table Properties

ALTER TABLE table_name SET TBLPROPERTIES table_properties

table_properties:
  : (property_name = property_value, property_name = property_value, ... )

You can use this statement to add your own metadata to the tables. Currently last_modified_user, last_modified_time properties are automatically added and managed by Hive. Users can add their own properties to this list. You can do DESCRIBE EXTENDED TABLE to get this information.

Alter Table Comment

To change the comment of a table you have to change the comment property of the TBLPROPERTIES:

ALTER TABLE table_name SET TBLPROPERTIES ('comment' = new_comment);

Add SerDe Properties

ALTER TABLE table_name SET SERDE serde_class_name [WITH SERDEPROPERTIES serde_properties]
ALTER TABLE table_name SET SERDEPROPERTIES serde_properties

serde_properties:
  : (property_name = property_value, property_name = property_value, ... )

This statement enables you to add user defined metadata to table SerDe object. The SerDe properties are passed to the table's SerDe when it is being initialized by Hive to serialize and deserialize data. So users can store any information required for their custom SerDe here. Refer to SerDe section of Users Guide for more information.

Example, note that both property_name and property_value must be quoted:

ALTER TABLE table_name SET SERDEPROPERTIES ('field.delim' = ',');

Alter Table Storage Properties

ALTER TABLE table_name CLUSTERED BY (col_name, col_name, ...) [SORTED BY (col_name, ...)] INTO num_buckets BUCKETS

These statements change the table's physical storage properties.

NOTE: These commands will only modify Hive's metadata, and will NOT reorganize or reformat existing data. Users should make sure the actual data layout conforms with the metadata definition.

Additional Alter Table Statements

See Alter Either Tables or Partitions below for more DDL statements that alter tables.

Alter Partition

Add Partitions

ALTER TABLE table_name ADD [IF NOT EXISTS] PARTITION partition_spec [LOCATION 'location1'] partition_spec [LOCATION 'location2'] ...

partition_spec:
  : (partition_col = partition_col_value, partition_col = partiton_col_value, ...)

You can use ALTER TABLE ADD PARTITION to add partitions to a table. Partition values should be quoted only if they are strings. The location must be a directory inside of which data files reside.

Note that it is proper syntax to have multiple partition_spec in a single ALTER TABLE, but if you do this in version 0.7, your partitioning scheme will fail. That is, every query specifying a partition will always use only the first partition. Instead, you should use the following form if you want to add many partitions:

ALTER TABLE table_name ADD PARTITION (partCol = 'value1') location 'loc1';
ALTER TABLE table_name ADD PARTITION (partCol = 'value2') location 'loc2';
...
ALTER TABLE table_name ADD PARTITION (partCol = 'valueN') location 'locN';

Specifically, the following example (which was the default example before) will FAIL silently and without error, and all queries will go only to dt='2008-08-08' partition, no matter which partition you specify.

ALTER TABLE page_view ADD PARTITION (dt='2008-08-08', country='us') location '/path/to/us/part080808' PARTITION (dt='2008-08-09', country='us') location '/path/to/us/part080809';

An error is thrown if the partition_spec for the table already exists. You can use IF NOT EXISTS to skip the error.

Dynamic Partitions

Partitions can be added to a table dynamically, using a Hive INSERT statement (or a Pig STORE statement). See these documents for details and examples:

• Design Document for Dynamic Partitions
• Tutorial: Dynamic-Partition Insert
• Hive DML: Dynamic Partition Inserts
• HCatalog Dynamic Partitioning
  • Usage with Pig
  • Usage from MapReduce

Rename Partition

ALTER TABLE table_name PARTITION partition_spec RENAME TO PARTITION partition_spec;

This statement lets you change the value of a partition column.

Recover Partitions (MSCK REPAIR TABLE)

Hive stores a list of partitions for each table in its metastore. If, however, new partitions are directly added to HDFS (say by using hadoop fs -put command), the metastore (and hence Hive) will not be aware of these partitions unless the user runs ALTER TABLE table_name ADD PARTITION commands on each of the newly added partitions.

However, users can run

MSCK REPAIR TABLE table_name;

which will add metadata about partitions to the Hive metastore for partitions for which such metadata doesn't already exist. In other words, it will add any partitions that exist on HDFS but not in metastore to the metastore. See HIVE-874 for more details.

The equivalent command on Amazon Elastic MapReduce (EMR)'s version of Hive is

ALTER TABLE table_name RECOVER PARTITIONS;

Drop Partitions

ALTER TABLE table_name DROP [IF EXISTS] PARTITION partition_spec, PARTITION partition_spec,...

You can use ALTER TABLE DROP PARTITION to drop a partition for a table. This removes the data and metadata for this partition.

For tables that are protected by NO DROP CASCADE, you can use the predicate IGNORE PROTECTION to drop a specified partition or set of partitions (for example, when splitting a table between two Hadoop clusters).

ALTER TABLE table_name DROP [IF EXISTS] PARTITION partition_spec IGNORE PROTECTION;

The above command will drop that partition regardless of protection stats.

In Hive 0.7.0 or later, DROP returns an error if the partition doesn't exist, unless IF EXISTS is specified or the configuration variable hive.exec.drop.ignorenonexistent is set to true.

ALTER TABLE page_view DROP PARTITION (dt='2008-08-08', country='us');

(Un)Archive Partition

ALTER TABLE table_name ARCHIVE PARTITION partition_spec;
ALTER TABLE table_name UNARCHIVE PARTITION partition_spec;

Archiving is a feature to moves a partition's files into a Hadoop Archive (HAR). Note that only the file count will be reduced; HAR does not provide any compression. See LanguageManual Archiving for more information

Alter Either Table or Partition

Alter Table/Partition File Format

ALTER TABLE table_name [PARTITION partitionSpec] SET FILEFORMAT file_format

This statement changes the table's (or partition's) file format. For available file_format options, see the section above on CREATE TABLE.

Alter Table/Partition Location

ALTER TABLE table_name [PARTITION partitionSpec] SET LOCATION "new location"

Alter Table/Partition Touch

ALTER TABLE table_name TOUCH [PARTITION partitionSpec];

TOUCH reads the metadata, and writes it back. This has the effect of causing the pre/post execute hooks to fire. An example use case is if you have a hook that logs all the tables/partitions that were modified, along with an external script that alters the files on HDFS directly. Since the script modifies files outside of hive, the modification wouldn't be logged by the hook. The external script could call TOUCH to fire the hook and mark the said table or partition as modified.

Also, it may be useful later if we incorporate reliable last modified times. Then touch would update that time as well.

Note that TOUCH doesn't create a table or partition if it doesn't already exist. (See Create Table.)

Alter Table/Partition Protections

ALTER TABLE table_name [PARTITION partition_spec] ENABLE|DISABLE NO_DROP;
ALTER TABLE table_name [PARTITION partition_spec] ENABLE|DISABLE OFFLINE;

Protection on data can be set at either the table or partition level. Enabling NO_DROP prevents a table or partition from being dropped. Enabling OFFLINE prevents the data in a table or partition from being queried, but the metadata can still be accessed. Note, if any partition in a table has NO_DROP enabled, the table cannot be dropped either.

Alter Column

Change Column Name/Type/Position/Comment

ALTER TABLE table_name CHANGE [COLUMN] col_old_name col_new_name column_type [COMMENT col_comment] [FIRST|AFTER column_name]

This command will allow users to change a column's name, data type, comment, or position, or an arbitrary combination of them.

Example:

CREATE TABLE test_change (a int, b int, c int);

// will change column a's name to a1
ALTER TABLE test_change CHANGE a a1 INT;

// will change column a's name to a1, a's data type to string, and put it after column b. The new table's structure is: b int, a1 string, c int
ALTER TABLE test_change CHANGE a a1 STRING AFTER b;

// will change column b's name to b1, and put it as the first column. The new table's structure is: b1 int, a string, c int
ALTER TABLE test_change CHANGE b b1 INT FIRST;

NOTE: The column change command will only modify Hive's metadata, and will NOT touch data. Users should make sure the actual data layout conforms with the metadata definition.

Add/Replace Columns

ALTER TABLE table_name ADD|REPLACE COLUMNS (col_name data_type [COMMENT col_comment], ...)

ADD COLUMNS lets you add new columns to the end of the existing columns but before the partition columns.

REPLACE COLUMNS removes all existing columns and adds the new set of columns. This can be done only for tables with native SerDe (DynamicSerDe, MetadataTypedColumnsetSerDe, LazySimpleSerDe and ColumnarSerDe). Refer to SerDe section of User Guide for more information. REPLACE COLUMNS can also be used to drop columns. For example:

"ALTER TABLE test_change REPLACE COLUMNS (a int, b int);" will remove column `c' from test_change's schema. Note that this does not delete underlying data, it just changes the schema.