DDL

CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE

Parquet data sources can be registered by executing a CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE SQL statement. It is not necessary to provide schema information for Parquet files.

CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE taxi
STORED AS PARQUET
LOCATION '/mnt/nyctaxi/tripdata.parquet';

CSV data sources can also be registered by executing a CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE SQL statement. The schema will be inferred based on scanning a subset of the file.

CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE test
STORED AS CSV
WITH HEADER ROW
LOCATION '/path/to/aggregate_simple.csv';

It is also possible to specify the schema manually.

CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE test (
    c1  VARCHAR NOT NULL,
    c2  INT NOT NULL,
    c3  SMALLINT NOT NULL,
    c4  SMALLINT NOT NULL,
    c5  INT NOT NULL,
    c6  BIGINT NOT NULL,
    c7  SMALLINT NOT NULL,
    c8  INT NOT NULL,
    c9  BIGINT NOT NULL,
    c10 VARCHAR NOT NULL,
    c11 FLOAT NOT NULL,
    c12 DOUBLE NOT NULL,
    c13 VARCHAR NOT NULL
)
STORED AS CSV
WITH HEADER ROW
LOCATION '/path/to/aggregate_test_100.csv';

When creating an output from a data source that is already ordered by an expression, you can pre-specify the order of the data using the WITH ORDER clause. This applies even if the expression used for sorting is complex, allowing for greater flexibility.

Here's an example of how to use WITH ORDER query

CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE test (
    c1  VARCHAR NOT NULL,
    c2  INT NOT NULL,
    c3  SMALLINT NOT NULL,
    c4  SMALLINT NOT NULL,
    c5  INT NOT NULL,
    c6  BIGINT NOT NULL,
    c7  SMALLINT NOT NULL,
    c8  INT NOT NULL,
    c9  BIGINT NOT NULL,
    c10 VARCHAR NOT NULL,
    c11 FLOAT NOT NULL,
    c12 DOUBLE NOT NULL,
    c13 VARCHAR NOT NULL
)
STORED AS CSV
WITH HEADER ROW
WITH ORDER (c2 ASC, c5 + c8 DESC NULL FIRST)
LOCATION '/path/to/aggregate_test_100.csv';

where WITH ORDER clause specifies the sort order:

WITH ORDER (sort_expression1 [ASC | DESC] [NULLS { FIRST | LAST }]
         [, sort_expression2 [ASC | DESC] [NULLS { FIRST | LAST }] ...])

Cautions When Using the WITH ORDER Clause

• It's important to understand that using the WITH ORDER clause in the CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE statement only specifies the order in which the data should be read from the external file. If the data in the file is not already sorted according to the specified order, then the results may not be correct.

• It's also important to note that the WITH ORDER clause does not affect the ordering of the data in the original external file.

If data sources are already partitioned in Hive style, PARTITIONED BY can be used for partition pruning.

/mnt/nyctaxi/year=2022/month=01/tripdata.parquet
/mnt/nyctaxi/year=2021/month=12/tripdata.parquet
/mnt/nyctaxi/year=2021/month=11/tripdata.parquet

CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE taxi
STORED AS PARQUET
PARTITIONED BY (year, month)
LOCATION '/mnt/nyctaxi';

CREATE TABLE

An in-memory table can be created with a query or values list.

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS valuetable AS VALUES(1,'HELLO'),(12,'DATAFUSION');

CREATE TABLE memtable as select * from valuetable;

DROP TABLE

Removes the table from DataFusion's catalog.

CREATE TABLE users AS VALUES(1,2),(2,3);
DROP TABLE users;
-- or use 'if exists' to silently ignore if the table doesn't exist
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS nonexistent_table;

CREATE VIEW

View is a virtual table based on the result of a SQL query. It can be created from an existing table or values list.

CREATE TABLE users AS VALUES(1,2),(2,3),(3,4),(4,5);
CREATE VIEW test AS SELECT column1 FROM users;
SELECT * FROM test;
+---------+
| column1 |
+---------+
| 1       |
| 2       |
| 3       |
| 4       |
+---------+

CREATE VIEW test AS VALUES(1,2),(5,6);
SELECT * FROM test;
+---------+---------+
| column1 | column2 |
+---------+---------+
| 1       | 2       |
| 5       | 6       |
+---------+---------+

DROP VIEW

Removes the view from DataFusion's catalog.

-- drop users_v view from the customer_a schema
DROP VIEW IF EXISTS customer_a.users_v;