question Drop external hive table with data in Support Questions

Drop external hive table with data

sihi_yassine — Wed, 04 Apr 2018 18:56:23 GMT

I have a lot of external table in my hive warhouse and I would to drop all these tables with data automatically.

how can I do this?

Shu_ashu — Wed, 04 Apr 2018 19:31:48 GMT

Do alter table on all tables and change the external table to internal table then drop the table.

Example:-

Write a script which can execute below statement for all the tables that are in warehouse directory

hive> ALTER TABLE <table-name> SET TBLPROPERTIES('EXTERNAL'='False'); //changing the tbl properties to to make the table as internal

hive> drop table <table-name>; //now the table is internal if you drop the table data will be dropped automatically.

sihi_yassine — Wed, 04 Apr 2018 20:11:13 GMT

Awesome, works like a charm