Querying Data

Function

This topic describes how to use Hive Query Language (HQL) to query and analyze data. You can query and analyze data using the following methods:

• Use common features for SELECT query, such as JOIN.
• Load data to a specified partition.
• Use Hive-provided functions.
• Query and analyze data using user-defined functions (UDFs). For details about how to create and define UDFs, see Creating User-Defined Hive Functions.

Example Codes

 -- Query the contact information of employees whose salaries are paid in USD. 
 SELECT  
 a.name,  
 b.tel_phone,  
 b.email  
 FROM employees_info a JOIN employees_contact b  ON(a.id = b.id) WHERE usd_flag='D'; 

 -- Query the IDs and names of employees who were hired in 2014, and load query results to the partition with the hiring time of 2014 in the employees_info_extended table. 
 INSERT OVERWRITE TABLE employees_info_extended PARTITION (entrytime = '2014')  
 SELECT  
 a.id,  
 a.name,  
 a.usd_flag,  
 a.salary,  
 a.deductions,  
 a.address, 
 b.tel_phone, 
 b.email  
 FROM employees_info a JOIN employees_contact b ON (a.id = b.id) WHERE a.entrytime = '2014'; 

 -- Use the existing Hive function COUNT() to count the number of records in the employees_info table. 
 SELECT COUNT(*) FROM employees_info; 

 -- Query information about employees whose email addresses end with "cn". 
 SELECT a.name, b.tel_phone FROM  employees_info a JOIN employees_contact b ON (a.id = b.id) WHERE b.email like '%cn'; 

Extensions

• Configure intermediate Hive data encryption.

  Set the table format to RCFile (recommended) or SequenceFile, and the encryption algorithm to ARC4Codec. SequenceFile is a unique Hadoop file format, and RCFile is a Hive file format with optimized column storage. When a big table is queried, RCFile provides higher performance than SequenceFile.

  set hive.exec.compress.output=true; 
   set hive.exec.compress.intermediate=true; 
   set hive.intermediate.compression.codec=org.apache.hadoop.io.encryption.arc4.ARC4Codec;

• For details about UDFs, see Creating User-Defined Hive Functions.