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What is the difference between managed and external tables in Hive or Spark SQL?

Spark/Big Dataeasy0.3 min readPremium
Frequency
Low
Asked at 1 company
Category
452
questions in Spark/Big Data
Difficulty Split
88E|81M|283H
in this category
Total Bank
1,863
across 7 categories
Asked at these companies
Infosys
Key Concepts Tested
sparksql
Expert AnswerPremium
63 wordsInterview-ready
**Managed**: Engine owns data. DROP TABLE deletes data. Default CREATE TABLE. **External**: Data in external location (S3, HDFS). DROP TABLE removes only metadata. CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE ... LOCATION. **When Which**: Managed for engine-controlled, transient. External for data lakes, multi-engine, retention. **Scalability Trade-offs**: Same. Choice is governance and lifecycle. **Cost Implications**: External = data survives table drop. Managed = clean drop....
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