Hive 1.1.0 Alter table partition type from int to string

Question

I have a table which has a partition of type int but which I want to convert to string. However, I can't figure out how to do this.

The table description is:

Col1 timestamp
Col2 string
Col3 string
Col4 string
Part_col int

# Partition information
# col_name data_type comment

Part_col int

The partitions I have created are Part_col=0, Part_col=1, ..., Part_col=23

I want to change them to Part_col='0' etc

I run this command in hive:

set hive.exec.dynamic.partitions = true;
Alter table tbl_name partition (Part_col=0) Part_col Part_col string;

I have also tried using "partition (Part_col)" to change all partitions at once.

I get the error "Invalid column reference Part_col"

I am using the example from https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/Hive/LanguageManual+Types for conversion of decimal columns but can't figure out what dec_column_name represents.

Thanks

Answer 1

A bit of digging revealed that there was a hive JIRA to have a command exactly for updating partition column data type (https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/HIVE-3672)

alter table {table_name} partition column ({column_name} {column_type});

According to JIRA the command was implemented, but it's apparent that it was never documented on Hive Wiki.

I used it on my Hive 0.14 system and it worked as expected.