layout: global title: CREATE HIVEFORMAT TABLE displayTitle: CREATE HIVEFORMAT TABLE 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

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Description

The CREATE TABLE statement defines a new table using Hive format.

Syntax

CREATE [ EXTERNAL ] TABLE [ IF NOT EXISTS ] table_identifier
    [ ( col_name1[:] col_type1 [ COMMENT col_comment1 ], ... ) ]
    [ COMMENT table_comment ]
    [ PARTITIONED BY ( col_name2[:] col_type2 [ COMMENT col_comment2 ], ... ) 
        | ( col_name1, col_name2, ... ) ]
    [ ROW FORMAT row_format ]
    [ STORED AS file_format ]
    [ LOCATION path ]
    [ TBLPROPERTIES ( key1=val1, key2=val2, ... ) ]
    [ AS select_statement ]

Note that, the clauses between the columns definition clause and the AS SELECT clause can come in as any order. For example, you can write COMMENT table_comment after TBLPROPERTIES.

Parameters

  • table_identifier

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

    Syntax: [ database_name. ] table_name

  • EXTERNAL

    Table is defined using the path provided as LOCATION, does not use default location for this table.

  • PARTITIONED BY

    Partitions are created on the table, based on the columns specified.

  • ROW FORMAT

    SERDE is used to specify a custom SerDe or the DELIMITED clause in order to use the native SerDe.

  • STORED AS

    File format for table storage, could be TEXTFILE, ORC, PARQUET, etc.

  • LOCATION

    Path to the directory where table data is stored, which could be a path on distributed storage like HDFS, etc.

  • COMMENT

    A string literal to describe the table.

  • TBLPROPERTIES

    A list of key-value pairs that is used to tag the table definition.

  • AS select_statement

    The table is populated using the data from the select statement.

Examples

--Use hive format
CREATE TABLE student (id INT, name STRING, age INT) STORED AS ORC;

--Use data from another table
CREATE TABLE student_copy STORED AS ORC
    AS SELECT * FROM student;

--Specify table comment and properties
CREATE TABLE student (id INT, name STRING, age INT)
    COMMENT 'this is a comment'
    STORED AS ORC
    TBLPROPERTIES ('foo'='bar');  

--Specify table comment and properties with different clauses order
CREATE TABLE student (id INT, name STRING, age INT)
    STORED AS ORC
    TBLPROPERTIES ('foo'='bar')
    COMMENT 'this is a comment';

--Create partitioned table
CREATE TABLE student (id INT, name STRING)
    PARTITIONED BY (age INT)
    STORED AS ORC;

--Create partitioned table with different clauses order
CREATE TABLE student (id INT, name STRING)
    STORED AS ORC
    PARTITIONED BY (age INT);

--Use Row Format and file format
CREATE TABLE student (id INT,name STRING)
    ROW FORMAT DELIMITED FIELDS TERMINATED BY ','
    STORED AS TEXTFILE;

Related Statements