One other slight difference is that when you drop an external table, Hive doesn't delete the files.
JVS ________________________________________ From: [email protected] [[email protected]] On Behalf Of ypai [[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, March 17, 2010 1:04 PM To: [email protected] 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?
