Page History

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• TINYINT (1-byte signed integer, from -128 to 127)
• SMALLINT (2-byte signed integer, from -32,768 to 32,767)

• INT/INTEGER (4-byte signed integer, from -2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647)

• BIGINT (8-byte signed integer, from -9,223,372,036,854,775,808 to 9,223,372,036,854,775,807)
• FLOAT (4-byte single precision floating point number)
• DOUBLE (8-byte double precision floating point number)

• DOUBLE PRECISION (alias for DOUBLE, only available starting with Hive 2.2.0)

• DECIMAL
  • Introduced in Hive 0.11.0 with a precision of 38 digits
  • Hive 0.13.0 introduced user-definable precision and scale
• NUMERIC (same as DECIMAL, starting with Hive 3.0.0)

Date/Time Types

• TIMESTAMP (Note: Only available starting with Hive 0.8.0)
• DATE (Note: Only available starting with Hive 0.12.0)
• INTERVAL (Note: Only available starting with Hive 1.2.0)

String Types

• STRING
• VARCHAR (Note: Only available starting with Hive 0.12.0)
• CHAR (Note: Only available starting with Hive 0.13.0)

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• arrays: ARRAY<data_type> (Note: negative values and non-constant expressions are allowed as of Hive 0.14.)
• maps: MAP<primitive_type, data_type> (Note: negative values and non-constant expressions are allowed as of Hive 0.14.)
• structs: STRUCT<col_name : data_type [COMMENT col_comment], ...>
• union: UNIONTYPE<data_type, data_type, ...> (Note: Only available starting with Hive 0.7.0.)

Column Types

Integral Types (TINYINT, SMALLINT, INT/INTEGER, BIGINT)

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Integral Types (TINYINT, SMALLINT, INT/INTEGER, BIGINT) Integral Types (TINYINT, SMALLINT, INT/INTEGER, BIGINT)

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tinyint tinyint

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smallint smallint

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int int

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bigint bigint

Integral literals are assumed to be INT by default, unless the number exceeds the range of INT in which case it is interpreted as a BIGINT, or if one of the following postfixes is present on the number.

Strings

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string string

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Strings Strings

String literals can be expressed with either single quotes (') or double quotes ("). Hive uses C-style escaping within the strings.

Varchar

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varchar varchar

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Varchar Varchar

Varchar types are created with a length specifier (between 1 and 6535565535), which defines the maximum number of characters allowed in the character string. If a string value being converted/assigned to a varchar value exceeds the length specifier, the string is silently truncated. Character length is determined by the number of code points contained by the character string.

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Char

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char char

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Char Char

Char types are similar to Varchar but they are fixed-length meaning that values shorter than the specified length value are padded with spaces but trailing spaces are not important during comparisons. The maximum length is fixed at 255.

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Timestamps

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timestamp timestamp

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Timestamps Timestamps

Supports traditional UNIX timestamp with optional nanosecond precision.

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Timestamps in text files have to use the format yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss[.f...]. If they are in another format, declare them as the appropriate type (INT, FLOAT, STRING, etc.) and use a UDF to convert them to timestamps.

On the table level, alternative timestamp formats can be supported by providing the format to the SerDe property "timestamp.formats" (as of release 1.2.0 with HIVE-9298). For example, yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSS,yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.

Dates

DATE values describe a particular year/month/day, in the form YYYY-­MM-­DD. For
example, DATE '2013-­01-­01'. Date types do not have a time of day component.
The range of values supported for the Date type is be 0000-­01-­01 to 9999-­12-­31, dependent on
support by the primitive Java Date type.

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Decimals 

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Intervals

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Decimals 

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decimal decimal

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Decimals Decimals

The DECIMAL type The DECIMAL type in Hive is based on Java's BigDecimal which is used for representing immutable arbitrary precision decimal numbers in Java. All regular number operations (e.g. +, -, *, /) and relevant UDFs (e.g. Floor, Ceil, Round, and many more) handle decimal types. You can cast to/from decimal types like you would do with other numeric types. The persistence format of the decimal type supports both scientific and non-scientific notation. Therefore, regardless of whether your dataset contains data like 1E+44 like 4.004E+3 (scientific notation) or 4004 (non-scientific notation) or a combination of both, DECIMAL can be used for it.

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For usage, see Floating Point Types in the Literals section below.anchor

Decimal Literals

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Decimal Literals Decimal Literals

Integral literals larger than BIGINT must be handled with Decimal(38,0). The Postfix BD is required. Example:

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The Decimal datatype is discussed further in Floating Point Types below.

Union Types

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union union

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Union Types Union Types

Union types can at any one point hold exactly one of their specified data types. You can create an instance of this type using the create_union UDF:

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Decimal literals provide precise values and greater range for floating point numbers than the DOUBLE type. Decimal data types store exact representations of numeric values, while DOUBLE data types store very close approximations of numeric values.

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• Positive
• Negative
• Addition
• Subtraction
• Multiplication
• Division
• Average (avg)
• Sum
• Count
• Modulus (pmod)
• Sign – Hive 0.13.0 and laterlater
• Exp – Hive 0.13.0 and later
• Ln – Hive 0.13.0 and later
• Log2 – Hive 0.13.0 and later
• Log10 – Hive 0.13.0 and later
• Log(base) – Hive 0.13.0 and later
• Sqrt – Exp – Hive 0.13.0 and later
• Ln – Sin – Hive 0.13.0 and later
• Log2 – Asin – Hive 0.13.0 and later
• Log10 – Cos – Hive 0.13.0 and later
• Log(base) – Acos – Hive 0.13.0 and later
• Sqrt – Tan – Hive 0.13.0 and later
• Sin – Atan – Hive 0.13.0 and later
• Asin – Radians – Hive 0.13.0 and later
• Cos – Degrees – Hive 0.13.0 and later
• Acos – Hive 0.13.0 and later
• Tan – Hive 0.13.0 and later
• Atan – Hive 0.13.0 and later
• Radians – Hive 0.13.0 and later
• Degrees – Hive 0.13.0 and later

These rounding functions can also take decimal types:

• Floor
• Ceiling
• Round

Power(decimal, n) only supports positive integer values for the exponent n.

Casting Decimal Values

Casting is supported between decimal values and any other primitive type such as integer, double, boolean, and so on.

Testing Decimal Types

Two new tests have been added as part of the TestCliDriver framework within Hive. They are decimal_1.q and decimal_2.q. Other tests such as udf7.q cover the gamut of UDFs mentioned above.

More tests need to be added that demonstrate failure or when certain types of casts are prevented (for example, casting to date). There is some ambiguity in the round function because the rounding of Decimal does not work exactly as the SQL standard, and therefore it has been omitted in the current work.

For general information about running Hive tests, see How to Contribute to Apache Hive and Hive Developer FAQ.

Handling of NULL Values

•  and later

These rounding functions can also take decimal types:

• Floor
• Ceiling
• Round

Power(decimal, n) only supports positive integer values for the exponent n.

Casting Decimal Values

Casting is supported between decimal values and any other primitive type such as integer, double, boolean, and so on.

Testing Decimal Types

Two new tests have been added as part of the TestCliDriver framework within Hive. They are decimal_1.q and decimal_2.q. Other tests such as udf7.q cover the gamut of UDFs mentioned above.

More tests need to be added that demonstrate failure or when certain types of casts are prevented (for example, casting to date). There is some ambiguity in the round function because the rounding of Decimal does not work exactly as the SQL standard, and therefore it has been omitted in the current work.

For general information about running Hive tests, see How to Contribute to Apache Hive and Hive Developer FAQ.

Handling of NULL Values

Missing values are represented by the special value NULL. To import data with NULL fields, check documentation of the SerDe used by the table. (The default Text Format uses LazySimpleSerDe which interprets the string \N as NULL when importing.)

Change Types

When hive.metastore.disallow.incompatible.col.type.changes is set to false, the types of columns in Metastore can be changed from any type to any other type. After such a type change, if the data can be shown correctly with the new type, the data will be displayed. Otherwise, the data will be displayed as NULL.Missing values are represented by the special value NULL. To import data with NULL fields, check documentation of the SerDe used by the table. (The default Text Format uses LazySimpleSerDe which interprets the string \N as NULL when importing.)

Allowed Implicit Conversions

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