Is there a way to convert locally managed table to external table?

[#1]

Use case: There is lot of data in the locally managed table and we want to convert those table into external table because we are working on a use case where our spark and home grown application has trouble reading locally managed tables.

Solution: alter table table_name SET TBLPROPERTIES('EXTERNAL'='TRUE');

Test:

Locally managed table dropped

hive> drop table sample_07;

OK

Time taken: 0.602 seconds

Data deleted as it's locally managed table.

hive> dfs -ls /apps/hive/warehouse/sample_07;

ls: `/apps/hive/warehouse/sample_07': No such file or directory

Command failed with exit code = 1

Query returned non-zero code: 1, cause: null

Converting sample_07_test from locally managed to external to keep the data there after drop.

hive> alter table sample_07_test SET TBLPROPERTIES('EXTERNAL'='TRUE');

OK

Time taken: 0.463 seconds

Table dropped after converting into external table.

hive> drop table sample_07_test;

OK

Time taken: 0.552 seconds

Data is still on HDFS

hive> dfs -ls /apps/hive/warehouse/sample_07_test;

Found 1 items

-rwxrwxrwx 3 hive hdfs 46059 2016-02-10 03:24 /apps/hive/warehouse/sample_07_test/000000_0

hive>

Table removed from HCatalog

hive> select * from sample_07_test;

FAILED: SemanticException [Error 10001]: Line 1:14 Table not found 'sample_07_test'

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