The goal is to destroy a Hive schema but keep the data underneath.
Given a Hive external table, created for example with script 1, it can be dropped with script 2. This deletes the data (removes the folder /user/me/data/
). This folder has to remain for use in other projects.
A long search does not yield anything so far...
Script 1: Create an external table
CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE external_hive_table(
column1 STRING
)
ROW FORMAT DELIMITED
FIELDS TERMINATED BY
'\t'
STORED AS TEXTFILE
LOCATION
'/user/me/data/'
TBLPROPERTIES (
"skip.header.line.count"="1");
Script 2: Drop external table (drop data)
ALTER TABLE
external_hive_table
SET TBLPROPERTIES (
'EXTERNAL'='FALSE');
DROP TABLE external_hive_table;
Edit: Script 3: Drop external table (keep data)
DROP TABLE external_hive_table;
Use only this statement (without alter table):
DROP TABLE external_hive_table;