Hi Jeetendra, What I was originally saying is that if you drop the table, it will deleted the data despite the fact that you put 'external' in the definition. I think this behavior is due to the fact that data is in /user/hive/warehouse and therefore Hive assumes ownership and ignores the 'external' directive! I would have assumed 'external' would still carry its meaning and dropping the table would not delete the data, but I was wrong. If I got this inaccurately please challenge my conclusion.
Thanks, Peyman On Mon, Aug 24, 2015 at 11:22 PM, Jeetendra G <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Peyman > > I created a new Hive external table with partition column name of 'yr' > instead of 'year' pointing to the same base directory. > if this is a case how come /user/hive/warehouse having the data? it should > not right? > > On Tue, Aug 25, 2015 at 4:41 AM, Peyman Mohajerian <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> Hi Guys, >> >> I managed to delete some data in HDFS by dropping a partitioned external >> Hive table. One explanation is that data resided in the 'warehouse' >> directory of Hive and that had something to do with? >> An alternative explanation may that my 'drop table' statement didn't >> delete the data but my follow up 'create table' statement with a different >> partition name did. Let me elaborate, files used to be in this directory >> structure: >> /user/hive/warehouse/<tablename>/year=2009 >> >> I created a new Hive external table with partition column name of 'yr' >> instead of 'year' pointing to the same base directory. Is it possible that >> this create statement deleted the data (highly doubt that)? Either case >> were unexpected to me! >> >> This is on Hive 1.0. >> >> Thanks, >> Peyman >> > >
