That's an interesting scenario. Unfotunately, there is no elegant way to do what you ask in Impala's SQL.   The query you really want to write is this one: select * from (select *, parts from example ex order by value desc limit 2) v, v.parts   The issue is that Impala currently does not support returning complex types in the select-list of an inline view: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/IMPALA-2777   Note that '*' in Impala expands to all scalar-typed colmns, so you need to list 'parts' explicitly. ... View more

Thank you for your quick response.  It's a bit disappointing that impala differs from hive: hive> select from_unixtime(1492677561,'yyyy-MM-dd\'H\'HH'); OK _c0 2017-04-20H08 I've created https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/IMPALA-5237    ... View more