Alter external hive table fails

[#1]

Alter table on the following external table fails:

CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE IF NOT EXISTS MODULES_1 ( `ModuleID` string ,

`ModuleName` string , `ContractType` string )

PARTITIONED BY ( meta_version string, year string, month string, day string)

ROW FORMAT SERDE 'org.apache.hadoop.hive.contrib.serde2.MultiDelimitSerDe'

WITH SERDEPROPERTIES ( "field.delim"="\t")

LOCATION '/tst/raw/comarch/modules/1'tblproperties("skip.header.line.count"="3");

When I try to modify this table using below:

Alter table MODULES_1 ADD COLUMNS(`OperationType` string)

FAILED: Execution Error, return code 1 from org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.exec.DDLTask. Error: type expected at the position 0 of '<derived from deserializer>:<derived from deserializer>:<derived from deserializer>:string' but '<' is found.

I tried it with partition specifications:

Alter table MODULES_1 PARTITIONS(meta_version,`year`,`month`,`day`) ADD COLUMNS(`OperationType` string)

that also fails.

Please suggest a workwround

[#2]

@Naveen Dabas

It should work actually. Try removing the '`' and execute it. Orelse the other way is to drop the table and re-create it. As it an external table it wont affect the data. Hope it helps!!