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Managed Table vs External Table

SQLeasy0.5 min readPremium
Frequency
Low
Asked at 1 company
Category
487
questions in SQL
Difficulty Split
130E|271M|86H
in this category
Total Bank
1,863
across 7 categories
Asked at these companies
Presidio
Key Concepts Tested
etl
Expert AnswerPremium
91 wordsInterview-ready
Managed table: Hive owns data; DROP TABLE deletes data. External table: data in external location; DROP TABLE keeps data, only drops metadata. Use managed for temp/intermediate; external for shared, production data (S3, HDFS) that must survive table drops. Create external: CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE t (c1 int) LOCATION 's3://bucket/path'. Best: use external for raw and curated layers; managed for intermediate ETL....
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