HIVE DATA TYPES

1. Hive Data Types – Primitive and
Complex Data Types in Hive

2.  Hive Data Types are the most fundamental thing
you must know before working with Hive
Queries.
 Data Types in Hive specifies the column type in Hive
tables. The article describes the two categories of
Hive Data types that are primitive data
type and complex data type along with their
example.

3. Data Types in Hive specifies the column/field type in the Hive table. It
specifies the type of values that can be inserted into the specified column.

4. Primitive Type
 Numeric
 Date/time
 String
 Miscellaneous

5. 1. Numeric Type
 The Numeric data type in Hive is categorized into
 Integral data type
 Floating data type
1.1 Integral data type
a. TINYINT – (1-byte signed integer ranging from -128
to 127)
b. SMALLINT – (2-byte signed integer ranging from -
32, 768 to 32, 767)
c. INTEGER – (4-byte signed integer ranging from -2,
147, 483, 648 to 2, 147, 483, 647)

6. d. BIGINT – (8-byte signed integer ranging from -9,
223, 372, 036, 854, 775, 808 to 9, 223, 372, 036,
854, 775, 807)
In Hive, Integral literals are assumed to be INTEGER
by default unless they cross the range of INTEGER
values. If we want to use a low integral value like
100 to be treated as TINYINT, SMALLINT, or BIGINT,
then we will use the following postfixes (shown in the
below table) with the number.

7. Type Postfix Example
TINYINT Y 100Y
SMALLINT S 100S
BIGINT L 100L

8. 1.2 Floating data type
a. FLOAT
 It is a 4-byte single-precision floating-point number.
b. DOUBLE
 It is an 8-byte double-precision floating-point number.
c. DOUBLE PRECISION
 It is an alias for DOUBLE. It is only available starting with
Hive 2.2.0
d. DECIMAL
 It was introduced in Hive 0.11.0. It is based on Java’s
BigDecimal. DECIMAL types support both scientific and
non-scientific notations.
 In Hive 0.11.0 and 0.12, the precision of the DECIMAL
type is fixed and limited to 38 digits.
 As of Hive 0.13, user can specify the scale and precision
during table creation using the syntax:
DECIMAL(precision, scale)

9.  If precision is not specified, then by default, it is
equal to 10.
 If the scale is not specified, then by default, it is
equal to 0.
 DECIMAL provides more precise values and greater
range than DOUBLE.
e. NUMERIC
It started with Hive 3.0.0. The NUMERIC data type is the same as the
DECIMAL type.

10. 2. Date/Time data type:
a. TIMESTAMP
 Timestamps were introduced in Hive 0.8.0. It
supports traditional UNIX timestamp with the
optional nanosecond precision.
 The supported Timestamps format is yyyy-mm-dd
hh:mm:ss[.f…] in the text files.
 If they are in any other format, declare them as the
appropriate type and use UDF(User Defined
Function) to convert them to timestamps.

11. b. DATE
 Dates were introduced in Hive 0.12.0. DATE value
describes a particular year/month/day in the form of
YYYY-MM-DD.
 For example- DATE ‘2020-02-04’
 It does not have a time of day component. The range
of value supported for the DATE type is 0000-01-01
to 9999-12-31.
c. INTERVAL
 Hive Interval data types are available only after
starting with Hive version 1.2 or above.
 Hive accepts the interval syntax with unit
specifications. We have to specify the units along
with the interval value.
 For example, INTERVAL ‘1’ DAY refers to the day

12. 3. String data type
a. STRING
 In Hive, String literals are represented either with the single
quotes(‘ ’) or with double-quotes(“ ”).
 Hive uses C-style escaping.
b. VARCHAR
 In Hive, VARCHAR data types are of different lengths, but we
have to specify the maximum number of characters allowed in
the character string.
 If the string value assigned to the varchar is less than the
maximum length, then the remaining space will be freed out.
 Also, if the string value assigned is more than the maximum
length, then the string is silently truncated.
 The length of the varchar is between(1 to 65535).
 Trailing whitespace is important in varchar and will affect the
comparison results.

13. c. CHAR
 CHAR data types are fixed-length.
 The values shorter than the specified length are padded
with the spaces.
 Unlike VARCHAR, trailing spaces are not significant in
CHAR types during comparisons.
 The maximum length of CHAR is fixed at 255.
 4. Miscellaneous data type
a. BOOLEAN
 Boolean types in Hive store either true or false.
b. BINARY
 BINARY type in Hive is an array of bytes.
 This is all about Hive Primitive Data Types. Let us now
study Hive Complex Data Types.

14. Hive Complex Data Type

15. 1. arrays
Array in Hive is an ordered sequence of similar type elements that are indexable using the zero-based integers.
Arrays in Hive are similar to the arrays in JAVA.
array<datatype>
Example: array(‘Data’,’Flair’). The second element is accessed as array[1].
2. maps
Map in Hive is a collection of key-value pairs, where the fields are accessed using array notations of keys (e.g., [‘key’]).
map<primitive_type, data_type>
Example: ‘first’ -> ‘John’, ‘last’ -> ‘Deo’, represented as map(‘first’, ‘John’, ‘last’, ‘Deo’). Now ‘John’ can be accessed with map[‘first’].
3. structs
STRUCT in Hive is similar to the STRUCT in C language. It is a record type that encapsulates a set of named fields, which can be any primitive
data type.
We can access the elements in STRUCT type using DOT (.) notation.
STRUCT <col_name : data_type [ COMMENT col_comment], ...>
Example: For a column c3 of type STRUCT {c1 INTEGER; c2 INTEGER}, the c1 field is accessed by the expression c3.c1.
4. union
UNION type in Hive is similar to the UNION in C. UNION types at any point of time can hold exactly one data type from its specified data types.
The full support for UNIONTYPE data type in Hive is still incomplete.
UNIONTYPE<data_type, data_type, ...>
Handling of NULL Values
In Hive data types, the missing values are represented by the special value NULL.
So, this was all in Hive Data Types. Hope you like our explanation.

16. Types of Hive Built-in Operators
Operator Operand Types Description
A=B All primitive types
TRUE if expression A is equal to expression
B. Otherwise FALSE.
A!=B All primitive types
TRUE if expression A is not equal to
expression B. Otherwise FALSE.
A<B All primitive types
TRUE if expression A is less than expression
B. Otherwise FALSE.
A <= B All primitive types
TRUE if expression A is less than or equal to
expression B. Otherwise FALSE.
A > B All primitive types
TRUE if expression A is greater than
expression B. Otherwise FALSE.
A >= B All primitive types
TRUE if expression A is greater than or
equal to expression B. Otherwise FALSE.
A IS NULL All types
TRUE if expression A evaluates to NULL.
Otherwise FALSE.
A IS NOT NULL All types
FALSE if expression A evaluates to NULL.
Otherwise FALSE.
A LIKE B String
TRUE if string pattern A matches to B.
Otherwise FALSE.
A REGEXP B String

17. Operator Operand types Description
A+B All number types Gives the result of adding A and B
A-B All number types Gives the result of subtracting B from A
A*B All number types Gives the result of multiplying A and
A/B All number types Gives the result of dividing A by B
A % B All number types
Gives the remainder resulting from dividing A
by B
A & B All number types Gives the result of bitwise AND of A and B
A | B All number types Gives the result of bitwise OR of A and B
A ^ B All number types Gives the result of bitwise XOR of A and B
~A All number types Gives the result of bitwise NOT of A.

18. Operator
Operand
types
Description
A AND B Boolean
TRUE if both A and B are
TRUE. Otherwise FALSE.
NULL if A or B is NULL.
A OR B Boolean
RUE if either A or B or both are
TRUE, FALSE OR NULL is
NULL. Otherwise FALSE.
NOT A Boolean
TRUE if A is FALSE or NULL if
A is NULL. Otherwise FALSE.
! A Boolean Same as NOT A.

19. Operator
Operand
types
Description
A || B strings
Concatenates the operands –
shorthand for concat(A,B)
Operator
Operand
types
Description
A[n]
A is an Array
and n is an int
Returns the nth element in the
array A. The first element has
index 0
M[key]
M is a Map<K,
V> and key
has type K
Returns the value corresponding
to the key in the map
S.x S is a struct Returns the x field of S.