SemanticException adding partiton Hive table

Question

Attempting to create a partition on a Hive table with the following:

> alter table stock_ticker add if not exists
> partition(stock_symbol='ASP')
> location 'data/stock_ticker_sample/stock_symbol=ASP/'

Which produces the following output

FAILED : SemanticException table is not partitioned but partition spec exists: {stock_symbol=ASP} 

There are no partitions on this table prior to this addition attempt

> show partitions stock_ticker;

which results in

FAILED: Execution Error, return code 1 from org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.exec.DDLTask. 
Table stock_ticker_sample is not a partitioned table

There is no question that the stock_symbol column exists and is of type string.

The query is what steps need to be taken in order to add this partition?

Answer 1

Solution would be to add partitioning info into the definition of stock_ticker table:

CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE stock_ticker (
... 
)
PARTITIONED BY (stock_symbol STRING);

Then easily you can add external data to your table by:

> alter table stock_ticker add if not exists
> partition(stock_symbol='ASP')
> location 'data/stock_ticker_sample/stock_symbol=ASP/'

GL!