In it's default configuration, metadata is cached until an "INVALIDATE METADATA" command evicts the table from the cache. Or until the catalog is restarted. In 5.16 and 6.1+ there are some non-default options that will evict metadata after a particular timeout. At some point these will become the defaults. Table stats are collected and stored in the hive metastore when you run a "compute stats" command. They are then just part of the table metadata. ... View more