What are the two types of tables in Hive?

What are types of tables in Hive?

Fundamentally, Hive knows two different types of tables: Internal table and the External table. The Internal table is also known as the managed table.

What is external table and managed table in Hive?

Managed tables are Hive owned tables where the entire lifecycle of the tables' data are managed and controlled by Hive. External tables are tables where Hive has loose coupling with the data. All the write operations to the Managed tables are performed using Hive SQL commands.

What are external tables in Hive?

An external table is a table for which Hive does not manage storage. If you delete an external table, only the definition in Hive is deleted. The data remains. An internal table is a table that Hive manages.

What is the difference between external and managed tables?

The main difference between a managed and external table is that when you drop an external table, the underlying data files stay intact. This is because the user is expected to manage the data files and directories. With a managed table, the underlying directories and data get wiped out when the table is dropped.