Creating tables

In this recipe, you will learn how to create tables in Hive.

How to do it…

The CREATE TABLE statement creates metadata in the database. The table in Hive is the way to read data from files present in HDFS in the table or a structural format. The general format of using the CREATE TABLE command is as follows:

CREATE [TEMPORARY] [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, ...), ...)
    [STORED AS DIRECTORIES]
    [
    [ROW FORMAT row_format]
    [STORED AS file_format]
    | STORED BY 'storage.handler.class.name' [WITH SERDEPROPERTIES (...)]
    ]
    [LOCATION hdfs_path]
    [TBLPROPERTIES (property_name...