layout: global title: INSERT OVERWRITE displayTitle: INSERT OVERWRITE license: | Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the “License”); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

 http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

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Description

The INSERT OVERWRITE statement overwrites the existing data in the table using the new values. The inserted rows can be specified by value expressions or result from a query.

Syntax

INSERT OVERWRITE [ TABLE ] table_identifier [ partition_spec [ IF NOT EXISTS ] ] [ ( column_list ) ]
    { VALUES ( { value | NULL } [ , ... ] ) [ , ( ... ) ] | query }

Parameters

  • table_identifier

    Specifies a table name, which may be optionally qualified with a database name.

    Syntax: [ database_name. ] table_name

  • partition_spec

    An optional parameter that specifies a comma-separated list of key and value pairs for partitions. Note that one can use a typed literal (e.g., date‘2019-01-02’) in the partition spec.

    Syntax: PARTITION ( partition_col_name [ = partition_col_val ] [ , ... ] )

  • column_list

    An optional parameter that specifies a comma-separated list of columns belonging to the table_identifier table. Spark will reorder the columns of the input query to match the table schema according to the specified column list.

    Note

    The current behaviour has some limitations:

    • All specified columns should exist in the table and not be duplicated from each other. It includes all columns except the static partition columns.
    • The size of the column list should be exactly the size of the data from VALUES clause or query.

  • VALUES ( { value | NULL } [ , ... ] ) [ , ( ... ) ]

    Specifies the values to be inserted. Either an explicitly specified value or a NULL can be inserted. A comma must be used to separate each value in the clause. More than one set of values can be specified to insert multiple rows.

  • query

    A query that produces the rows to be inserted. It can be in one of following formats:

    • a SELECT statement
    • a TABLE statement
    • a FROM statement

Examples

Insert Using a VALUES Clause

-- Assuming the students table has already been created and populated.
SELECT * FROM students;
+-------------+--------------------------+----------+
|         name|                   address|student_id|
+-------------+--------------------------+----------+
|    Amy Smith|    123 Park Ave, San Jose|    111111|
|    Bob Brown|  456 Taylor St, Cupertino|    222222|
|Cathy Johnson|   789 Race Ave, Palo Alto|    333333|
|Dora Williams|134 Forest Ave, Menlo Park|    444444|
|Fleur Laurent|     345 Copper St, London|    777777|
|Gordon Martin|      779 Lake Ave, Oxford|    888888|
|  Helen Davis| 469 Mission St, San Diego|    999999|
|   Jason Wang|     908 Bird St, Saratoga|    121212|
+-------------+--------------------------+----------+

INSERT OVERWRITE students VALUES
    ('Ashua Hill', '456 Erica Ct, Cupertino', 111111),
    ('Brian Reed', '723 Kern Ave, Palo Alto', 222222);

SELECT * FROM students;
+----------+-----------------------+----------+
|      name|                address|student_id|
+----------+-----------------------+----------+
|Ashua Hill|456 Erica Ct, Cupertino|    111111|
|Brian Reed|723 Kern Ave, Palo Alto|    222222|
+----------+-----------------------+----------+

Insert Using a SELECT Statement

-- Assuming the persons table has already been created and populated.
SELECT * FROM persons;
+-------------+--------------------------+---------+
|         name|                   address|      ssn|
+-------------+--------------------------+---------+
|Dora Williams|134 Forest Ave, Menlo Park|123456789|
+-------------+--------------------------+---------+
|  Eddie Davis|   245 Market St, Milpitas|345678901|
+-------------+--------------------------+---------+

INSERT OVERWRITE students PARTITION (student_id = 222222)
    SELECT name, address FROM persons WHERE name = "Dora Williams";

SELECT * FROM students;
+-------------+--------------------------+----------+
|         name|                   address|student_id|
+-------------+--------------------------+----------+
|   Ashua Hill|   456 Erica Ct, Cupertino|    111111|
+-------------+--------------------------+----------+
|Dora Williams|134 Forest Ave, Menlo Park|    222222|
+-------------+--------------------------+----------+

Insert Using a TABLE Statement

-- Assuming the visiting_students table has already been created and populated.
SELECT * FROM visiting_students;
+-------------+---------------------+----------+
|         name|              address|student_id|
+-------------+---------------------+----------+
|Fleur Laurent|345 Copper St, London|    777777|
+-------------+---------------------+----------+
|Gordon Martin| 779 Lake Ave, Oxford|    888888|
+-------------+---------------------+----------+

INSERT OVERWRITE students TABLE visiting_students;

SELECT * FROM students;
+-------------+---------------------+----------+
|         name|              address|student_id|
+-------------+---------------------+----------+
|Fleur Laurent|345 Copper St, London|    777777|
+-------------+---------------------+----------+
|Gordon Martin| 779 Lake Ave, Oxford|    888888|
+-------------+---------------------+----------+

Insert Using a FROM Statement

-- Assuming the applicants table has already been created and populated.
SELECT * FROM applicants;
+-----------+--------------------------+----------+---------+
|       name|                   address|student_id|qualified|
+-----------+--------------------------+----------+---------+
|Helen Davis| 469 Mission St, San Diego|    999999|     true|
+-----------+--------------------------+----------+---------+
|   Ivy King|367 Leigh Ave, Santa Clara|    101010|    false|
+-----------+--------------------------+----------+---------+
| Jason Wang|     908 Bird St, Saratoga|    121212|     true|
+-----------+--------------------------+----------+---------+

INSERT OVERWRITE students
    FROM applicants SELECT name, address, id applicants WHERE qualified = true;

SELECT * FROM students;
+-----------+-------------------------+----------+
|       name|                  address|student_id|
+-----------+-------------------------+----------+
|Helen Davis|469 Mission St, San Diego|    999999|
+-----------+-------------------------+----------+
| Jason Wang|    908 Bird St, Saratoga|    121212|
+-----------+-------------------------+----------+

Insert Using a Typed Date Literal for a Partition Column Value

CREATE TABLE students (name STRING, address  STRING) PARTITIONED BY (birthday DATE);

INSERT INTO students PARTITION (birthday = date'2019-01-02')
    VALUES ('Amy Smith', '123 Park Ave, San Jose');

SELECT * FROM students;
+-------------+-------------------------+-----------+
|         name|                  address|   birthday|
+-------------+-------------------------+-----------+
|    Amy Smith|   123 Park Ave, San Jose| 2019-01-02|
+-------------+-------------------------+-----------+

INSERT INTO students PARTITION (birthday = date'2019-01-02')
    VALUES('Jason Wang', '908 Bird St, Saratoga');

SELECT * FROM students;
+-----------+-------------------------+-----------+
|       name|                  address|   birthday|
+-----------+-------------------------+-----------+
| Jason Wang|    908 Bird St, Saratoga| 2019-01-02|
+-----------+-------------------------+-----------+
#### Insert with a column list

```sql
INSERT OVERWRITE students (address, name, student_id) VALUES
    ('Hangzhou, China', 'Kent Yao', 11215016);

SELECT * FROM students WHERE name = 'Kent Yao';
+---------+----------------------+----------+
|     name|               address|student_id|
+---------+----------------------+----------+
|Kent Yao |       Hangzhou, China|  11215016|
+---------+----------------------+----------+

Insert with both a partition spec and a column list

INSERT OVERWRITE students PARTITION (student_id = 11215016) (address, name) VALUES
    ('Hangzhou, China', 'Kent Yao Jr.');

SELECT * FROM students WHERE student_id = 11215016;
+------------+----------------------+----------+
|        name|               address|student_id|
+------------+----------------------+----------+
|Kent Yao Jr.|       Hangzhou, China|  11215016|
+------------+----------------------+----------+

Related Statements