CREATE TABLE

Creates a table with the name and the parameters that you specify.

Note

This page contains summary reference information. For more information about creating tables in Athena and an example CREATE TABLE statement, see Create tables in Athena. For an example of creating a database, creating a table, and running a SELECT query on the table in Athena, see Get started.

Synopsis


CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE [IF NOT EXISTS]
 [db_name.]table_name [(col_name data_type [COMMENT col_comment] [, ...] )]
 [COMMENT table_comment]
 [PARTITIONED BY (col_name data_type [COMMENT col_comment], ...)]
 [CLUSTERED BY (col_name, col_name, ...) INTO num_buckets BUCKETS]
 [ROW FORMAT row_format]
 [STORED AS file_format] 
 [WITH SERDEPROPERTIES (...)]
 [LOCATION 's3://amzn-s3-demo-bucket/[folder]/']
 [TBLPROPERTIES ( ['has_encrypted_data'='true | false',] ['classification'='aws_glue_classification',] property_name=property_value [, ...] ) ]

Parameters

EXTERNAL: Specifies that the table is based on an underlying data file that exists in Amazon S3, in the LOCATION that you specify. Except when creating Iceberg tables, always use the EXTERNAL keyword. If you use CREATE TABLE without the EXTERNAL keyword for non-Iceberg tables, Athena issues an error. When you create an external table, the data referenced must comply with the default format or the format that you specify with the ROW FORMAT, STORED AS, and WITH SERDEPROPERTIES clauses.

[IF NOT EXISTS]

This parameter checks if a table with the same name already exists. If it does, the parameter returns TRUE, and Amazon Athena cancels the CREATE TABLE action. Because cancellation occurs before Athena calls the data catalog, it doesn't emit a AWS CloudTrail event.

[db_name.]table_name

Specifies a name for the table to be created. The optional db_name parameter specifies the database where the table exists. If omitted, the current database is assumed. If the table name includes numbers, enclose table_name in quotation marks, for example "table123". If table_name begins with an underscore, use backticks, for example, `_mytable`. Special characters (other than underscore) are not supported.

Athena table names are case-insensitive; however, if you work with Apache Spark, Spark requires lowercase table names. For restrictions on table names in Athena, see Name databases, tables, and columns.

[ ( col_name data_type [COMMENT col_comment] [, ...] ) ]

Specifies the name for each column to be created, along with the column's data type. Column names do not allow special characters other than underscore (_). If col_name begins with an underscore, enclose the column name in backticks, for example `_mycolumn`. For restrictions on column names in Athena, see Name databases, tables, and columns.

The data_type value can be any of the following:

boolean – Values are true and false.
tinyint – A 8-bit signed integer in two's complement format, with a minimum value of -2^7 and a maximum value of 2^7-1.
smallint – A 16-bit signed integer in two's complement format, with a minimum value of -2^15 and a maximum value of 2^15-1.
int – In Data Definition Language (DDL) queries like CREATE TABLE, use the int keyword to represent an integer. In other queries, use the keyword integer, where integer is represented as a 32-bit signed value in two's complement format, with a minimum value of-2^31 and a maximum value of 2^31-1. In the JDBC driver, integer is returned, to ensure compatibility with business analytics applications.
bigint – A 64-bit signed integer in two's complement format, with a minimum value of -2^63 and a maximum value of 2^63-1.
double – A 64-bit signed double-precision floating point number. The range is 4.94065645841246544e-324d to 1.79769313486231570e+308d, positive or negative. double follows the IEEE Standard for Floating-Point Arithmetic (IEEE 754).
float – A 32-bit signed single-precision floating point number. The range is 1.40129846432481707e-45 to 3.40282346638528860e+38, positive or negative. float follows the IEEE Standard for Floating-Point Arithmetic (IEEE 754). Equivalent to the real in Presto. In Athena, use float in DDL statements like CREATE TABLE and real in SQL functions like SELECT CAST. The AWS Glue crawler returns values in float, and Athena translates real and float types internally (see the June 5, 2018 release notes).
decimal [ (precision, scale) ], where precision is the total number of digits, and scale (optional) is the number of digits in fractional part, the default is 0. For example, use these type definitions: decimal(11,5), decimal(15). The maximum value for precision is 38, and the maximum value for scale is 38.

To specify decimal values as literals, such as when selecting rows with a specific decimal value in a query DDL expression, specify the decimal type definition, and list the decimal value as a literal (in single quotes) in your query, as in this example: decimal_value = decimal '0.12'.
char – Fixed length character data, with a specified length between 1 and 255, such as char(10). For more information, see CHAR Hive data type.
varchar – Variable length character data, with a specified length between 1 and 65535, such as varchar(10). For more information, see VARCHAR Hive data type.
string – A string literal enclosed in single or double quotes.

Note
Non-string data types cannot be cast to string in Athena; cast them to varchar instead.
binary – (for data in Parquet)
date – A date in ISO format, such as YYYY-MM-DD. For example, date '2008-09-15'. An exception is the OpenCSVSerDe, which uses the number of days elapsed since January 1, 1970. For more information, see Open CSV SerDe for processing CSV.
timestamp – Date and time instant in a java.sql.Timestamp compatible format up to a maximum resolution of milliseconds, such as yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss[.f...]. For example, timestamp '2008-09-15 03:04:05.324'. An exception is the OpenCSVSerDe, which uses TIMESTAMP data in the UNIX numeric format (for example, 1579059880000). For more information, see Open CSV SerDe for processing CSV.
array < data_type >
map < primitive_type, data_type >
struct < col_name : data_type [comment col_comment] [, ...] >

[COMMENT table_comment]

Creates the comment table property and populates it with the table_comment you specify.

[PARTITIONED BY (col_name data_type [ COMMENT col_comment ], ... ) ]

Creates a partitioned table with one or more partition columns that have the col_name, data_type and col_comment specified. A table can have one or more partitions, which consist of a distinct column name and value combination. A separate data directory is created for each specified combination, which can improve query performance in some circumstances. Partitioned columns don't exist within the table data itself. If you use a value for col_name that is the same as a table column, you get an error. For more information, see Partitioning Data.

Note

After you create a table with partitions, run a subsequent query that consists of the MSCK REPAIR TABLE clause to refresh partition metadata, for example, MSCK REPAIR TABLE cloudfront_logs;. For partitions that are not Hive compatible, use ALTER TABLE ADD PARTITION to load the partitions so that you can query the data.

[CLUSTERED BY (col_name, col_name, ...) INTO num_buckets BUCKETS]: Divides, with or without partitioning, the data in the specified col_name columns into data subsets called buckets. The num_buckets parameter specifies the number of buckets to create. Bucketing can improve the performance of some queries on large data sets.

[ROW FORMAT row_format]

Specifies the row format of the table and its underlying source data if applicable. For row_format, you can specify one or more delimiters with the DELIMITED clause or, alternatively, use the SERDE clause as described below. If ROW FORMAT is omitted or ROW FORMAT DELIMITED is specified, a native SerDe is used.

[DELIMITED FIELDS TERMINATED BY char [ESCAPED BY char]]
[DELIMITED COLLECTION ITEMS TERMINATED BY char]
[MAP KEYS TERMINATED BY char]
[LINES TERMINATED BY char]
[NULL DEFINED AS char]

Available only with Hive 0.13 and when the STORED AS file format is TEXTFILE.

--OR--

SERDE 'serde_name' [WITH SERDEPROPERTIES ("property_name" = "property_value", "property_name" = "property_value" [, ...] )]

The serde_name indicates the SerDe to use. The WITH SERDEPROPERTIES clause allows you to provide one or more custom properties allowed by the SerDe.

[STORED AS file_format]

Specifies the file format for table data. If omitted, TEXTFILE is the default. Options for file_format are:

SEQUENCEFILE
TEXTFILE
RCFILE
ORC
PARQUET
AVRO
ION
INPUTFORMAT input_format_classname OUTPUTFORMAT output_format_classname

[LOCATION 's3://amzn-s3-demo-bucket/[folder]/']

Specifies the location of the underlying data in Amazon S3 from which the table is created. The location path must be a bucket name or a bucket name and one or more folders. If you are using partitions, specify the root of the partitioned data. For more information about table location, see Specify a table location in Amazon S3. For information about data format and permissions, see Amazon S3 considerations.

Use a trailing slash for your folder or bucket. Do not use file names or glob characters.

Use:

s3://amzn-s3-demo-bucket/

s3://amzn-s3-demo-bucket/folder/

s3://amzn-s3-demo-bucket/folder/anotherfolder/

Don't use:

s3://amzn-s3-demo-bucket

s3://amzn-s3-demo-bucket/*

s3://amzn-s3-demo-bucket/mydatafile.dat

[TBLPROPERTIES ( ['has_encrypted_data'='true | false',] ['classification'='classification_value',] property_name=property_value [, ...] ) ]

Specifies custom metadata key-value pairs for the table definition in addition to predefined table properties, such as "comment".

has_encrypted_data – Athena has a built-in property, has_encrypted_data. Set this property to true to indicate that the underlying dataset specified by LOCATION is encrypted. If omitted and if the workgroup's settings do not override client-side settings, false is assumed. If omitted or set to false when underlying data is encrypted, the query results in an error. For more information, see Encryption at rest.

classification – Tables created for Athena in the CloudTrail console add cloudtrail as a value for the classification property. To run ETL jobs, AWS Glue requires that you create a table with the classification property to indicate the data type for AWS Glue as csv, parquet, orc, avro, or json. For example, 'classification'='csv'. ETL jobs will fail if you do not specify this property. You can subsequently specify it using the AWS Glue console, API, or CLI. For more information, see Create tables for ETL jobs and Authoring Jobs in AWS Glue in the AWS Glue Developer Guide.

compression_level – The compression_level property specifies the compression level to use. This property applies only to ZSTD compression. Possible values are from 1 to 22. The default value is 3. For more information, see Use ZSTD compression levels.

For more information about other table properties, see ALTER TABLE SET TBLPROPERTIES.

Examples

The following example CREATE TABLE statement creates a table based on tab-separated planet data stored in Amazon S3.


CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE planet_data (
  planet_name string,
  order_from_sun int,
  au_to_sun float,
  mass float,
  gravity_earth float,
  orbit_years float,
  day_length float
  )
ROW FORMAT DELIMITED
FIELDS TERMINATED BY '\t'
STORED AS TEXTFILE
LOCATION 's3://amzn-s3-demo-bucket/tsv/'

Note the following points:

The ROW FORMAT DELIMITED clause indicates that the data is delimited by a specific character.
The FIELDS TERMINATED BY '\t' clause specifies that the fields in the TSV data are separated by the tab character ('\t').
The STORED AS TEXTFILE clause indicates that the data is stored as plain text files in Amazon S3.

To query the data, you could use a simple SELECT statement like the following:


SELECT * FROM planet_data

To use the example to create your own TSV table in Athena, replace the table and column names with the names and data types of your own table and columns, and update the LOCATION clause to point to the Amazon S3 path where your TSV files are stored.

For more information about creating tables, see Create tables in Athena.

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Document Conventions

CREATE DATABASE

CREATE TABLE AS