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Posted to user@hive.apache.org by ypai <yp...@kompany.org> on 2010/03/17 21:04:09 UTC

Functional differences btw. "EXTERNAL" and regular tables

Are there any advantages/disadvantages to EXTERNAL tables?

Is the only functional difference for a table declared as "EXTERNAL" that
the user can specify where its files are located in HDFS?

RE: Functional differences btw. "EXTERNAL" and regular tables

Posted by John Sichi <js...@facebook.com>.

One other slight difference is that when you drop an external table, Hive doesn't delete the files.

JVS

________________________________________
From: yen.pai@gmail.com [yen.pai@gmail.com] On Behalf Of ypai [ypai@kompany.org]
Sent: Wednesday, March 17, 2010 1:04 PM
To: hive-user@hadoop.apache.org
Subject: Functional differences btw. "EXTERNAL" and regular tables

Are there any advantages/disadvantages to EXTERNAL tables?

Is the only functional difference for a table declared as "EXTERNAL" that the user can specify where its files are located in HDFS?