Describe Impala Query Metadata

Question

Is there a way of getting the metadata of a query?

I can use DESCRIBE but this only applies to tables, I don't really want to have to create a table from the query and get the metadata of that table as that would be unnecessarily expensive even if I limited the result rows.

I'm using impala shell to output queries to delimited files (usually only a couple of hundred rows) which are sometimes needed to be imported into an Access database.

I'd like to know the data types as then I can make Access use the correct data types rather than defaulting to string.

You could CREATE VIEW xxxx AS, then DESCRIBE xxxx, then DROP VIEW xxxx. No need to execute it. — Samson Scharfrichter
Thanks, that seems to do the trick, do you want to stick it as an answer so I can mark it as such? — Tim Edwards
Nah... that trick is not really worth 15 pts (it works with any database that supports views, by the way) — Samson Scharfrichter
@SamsonScharfrichter marking as an answer will help many people looking for answers (or looking to answer) to know that it is an accepted answer. It's a good answer -- go for it :-) — Tom Harrison
...or @Tim could update the title so that it shows [Solved] Describe Impala Query Metadata. — Samson Scharfrichter

Tim Edwards Tim Edwards · Accepted Answer · 2016-07-18T14:01:49

The answer, thanks to @SamsonScharfrichter is

CREATE VIEW xxxx AS, then DESCRIBE xxxx, then DROP VIEW xxxx.

Describe Impala Query Metadata

1 Answers