Partitioning and bucketing are forms to improve hive performance. Neither is mandate but is good to have. The partitioning and bucketing depend a lot on how the table looks like. If the table has millions / billions of row or the table is too wide with hundreds of columns, the query performance is impacted greatly. To answer your question, the only effect is see is performance degradation. But, it again if the table is small (my assumption ~10-15 mil) then one bucket or more than one bucket will not bring significant improvement. But, with million of rows, it always good to bucket, so the query is evaluated only on the rows within a 1/2 buckets and this results in increased performance. When the table has billions and are wide as well, ideally it is always bucketed and partitioned both interchangeably. There is no perfect solution, it always defers depending on the scenario. Hope this helps. If the comment helps you to find a solution or move forward, please accept it as a solution for other community members.
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