https://community.cloudera.com/t5/Support-Questions/Impala-table-definition/m-p/66672#M13691 <P>1. you can go ahead create external table directly to impala , i dont see any issue in there .&nbsp;</P><P>&nbsp;</P><P>2.&nbsp; Use external table when multiple client tool want to have a centeralized data i, you have to decided whether your external table data&nbsp; is going to be used by another external program outside hdfs for example pig etc&nbsp;</P><P>&nbsp;</P><P>3. that totally depends on the future requirement but mostly people prefer&nbsp; timestamps over string format when it comes to dates.&nbsp;</P><P>&nbsp;</P><P>note&nbsp; - lo<SPAN>ading data into Parquet tables is a memory-intensive operation , you got to keep an eye on it .&nbsp;</SPAN></P> Tue, 24 Apr 2018 11:03:17 GMT csguna 2018-04-24T11:03:17Z