Creating views

In this recipe, you will learn how to create a view in Hive.

Getting ready

A view is a virtual table that acts as a window to the data for the underlying table commonly known as the base table. It consists of rows and columns but no physical data. So when a view is accessed, the underlying base table is queried for the output.

Note

A base table can also be a view that will have a base table of its own. So if the first view is accessed, then the base table of the second view gives the output for the query.

The general syntax of creating a view is as follows:

CREATE VIEW [IF NOT EXISTS] view_name [(column_name [COMMENT column_comment], ...)]
    [COMMENT view_comment]
    [TBLPROPERTIES (property_name = property_value, ...)]
    AS SELECT ...;

Where:

• [IF NOT EXISTS]: Is an optional clause. If there is an attempt to create a view that is already present in the database, then an error is thrown. In such cases, the IF NOT EXISTS clause is used, which will ignore the entire statement and...