How to change a column name in hive

Question

I have a hive table where the name of the columns are orderbook.time, orderbook.price, etc. I want to remove the prefix orderbook from the column names without changing anything else in the table. I'm using the following command

alter table orderbook change orderbook.time time;

but it gives me the following error message

NoViableAltException(17@[])
    at org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.parse.HiveParser_IdentifiersParser.identifier(HiveParser_IdentifiersParser.java:11568)
    at org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.parse.HiveParser.identifier(HiveParser.java:45214)
    at org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.parse.HiveParser.alterStatementSuffixRenameCol(HiveParser.java:10258)
    at org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.parse.HiveParser.alterTblPartitionStatementSuffix(HiveParser.java:8533)
    at org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.parse.HiveParser.alterTableStatementSuffix(HiveParser.java:8148)
    at org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.parse.HiveParser.alterStatement(HiveParser.java:7192)
    at org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.parse.HiveParser.ddlStatement(HiveParser.java:2604)
    at org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.parse.HiveParser.execStatement(HiveParser.java:1591)
    at org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.parse.HiveParser.statement(HiveParser.java:1067)
    at org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.parse.ParseDriver.parse(ParseDriver.java:205)
    at org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.parse.ParseDriver.parse(ParseDriver.java:170)
    at org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.Driver.compile(Driver.java:524)
    at org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.Driver.compileInternal(Driver.java:1358)
    at org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.Driver.runInternal(Driver.java:1475)
    at org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.Driver.run(Driver.java:1287)
    at org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.Driver.run(Driver.java:1277)
    at org.apache.hadoop.hive.cli.CliDriver.processLocalCmd(CliDriver.java:226)
    at org.apache.hadoop.hive.cli.CliDriver.processCmd(CliDriver.java:175)
    at org.apache.hadoop.hive.cli.CliDriver.processLine(CliDriver.java:389)
    at org.apache.hadoop.hive.cli.CliDriver.executeDriver(CliDriver.java:781)
    at org.apache.hadoop.hive.cli.CliDriver.run(CliDriver.java:699)
    at org.apache.hadoop.hive.cli.CliDriver.main(CliDriver.java:634)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:62)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:498)
    at org.apache.hadoop.util.RunJar.run(RunJar.java:226)
    at org.apache.hadoop.util.RunJar.main(RunJar.java:141)
FAILED: ParseException line 1:38 cannot recognize input near '.' 'time' 'time' in rename column name

I tried to put the old column names (e.g. orderbook.time) into quatation, but I'm getting the same error message. How can I change the column names?

notNull notNull · Accepted Answer · 2019-09-20T17:53:37

You are missing datatype of time column and Then try escaping the column name with period with `(backtick)

Try with below query:

alter table orderbook change `orderbook.time` time <data_type>;

In general Syntax to change column name in Hive:

alter table <db_name>.<table_name> change `<col_name>` `<new_col_name>` <data_type>;

How to change a column name in hive

1 Answers