--- 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 http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License. --- ### Description The `CREATE TABLE` statement defines a new table using Hive format. ### Syntax ```sql 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 ] row_format: : SERDE serde_class [ WITH SERDEPROPERTIES (k1=v1, k2=v2, ... ) ] | DELIMITED [ FIELDS TERMINATED BY fields_termiated_char [ ESCAPED BY escaped_char ] ] [ COLLECTION ITEMS TERMINATED BY collection_items_termiated_char ] [ MAP KEYS TERMINATED BY map_key_termiated_char ] [ LINES TERMINATED BY row_termiated_char ] [ NULL DEFINED AS null_char ] ``` 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** Use the `SERDE` clause to specify a custom SerDe for one table. Otherwise, use the `DELIMITED` clause to use the native SerDe and specify the delimiter, escape character, null character and so on. * **SERDE** Specifies a custom SerDe for one table. * **serde_class** Specifies a fully-qualified class name of a custom SerDe. * **SERDEPROPERTIES** A list of key-value pairs that is used to tag the SerDe definition. * **DELIMITED** The `DELIMITED` clause can be used to specify the native SerDe and state the delimiter, escape character, null character and so on. * **FIELDS TERMINATED BY** Used to define a column separator. * **COLLECTION ITEMS TERMINATED BY** Used to define a collection item separator. * **MAP KEYS TERMINATED BY** Used to define a map key separator. * **LINES TERMINATED BY** Used to define a row separator. * **NULL DEFINED AS** Used to define the specific value for NULL. * **ESCAPED BY** Used for escape mechanism. * **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 ```sql --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; --Use complex datatype CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE family( name STRING, friends ARRAY, children MAP, address STRUCT ) ROW FORMAT DELIMITED FIELDS TERMINATED BY ',' ESCAPED BY '\\' COLLECTION ITEMS TERMINATED BY '_' MAP KEYS TERMINATED BY ':' LINES TERMINATED BY '\n' NULL DEFINED AS 'foonull' STORED AS TEXTFILE LOCATION '/tmp/family/'; --Use predefined custom SerDe CREATE TABLE avroExample ROW FORMAT SERDE 'org.apache.hadoop.hive.serde2.avro.AvroSerDe' STORED AS INPUTFORMAT 'org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.io.avro.AvroContainerInputFormat' OUTPUTFORMAT 'org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.io.avro.AvroContainerOutputFormat' TBLPROPERTIES ('avro.schema.literal'='{ "namespace": "org.apache.hive", "name": "first_schema", "type": "record", "fields": [ { "name":"string1", "type":"string" }, { "name":"string2", "type":"string" } ] }'); --Use personalized custom SerDe(we may need to `ADD JAR xxx.jar` first to ensure we can find the serde_class, --or you may run into `CLASSNOTFOUND` exception) ADD JAR /tmp/hive_serde_example.jar; CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE family (id INT, name STRING) ROW FORMAT SERDE 'com.ly.spark.serde.SerDeExample' STORED AS INPUTFORMAT 'com.ly.spark.example.serde.io.SerDeExampleInputFormat' OUTPUTFORMAT 'com.ly.spark.example.serde.io.SerDeExampleOutputFormat' LOCATION '/tmp/family/'; ``` ### Related Statements * [CREATE TABLE USING DATASOURCE](sql-ref-syntax-ddl-create-table-datasource.html) * [CREATE TABLE LIKE](sql-ref-syntax-ddl-create-table-like.html)