Saving Hive Query Result to HIVE TABLE or FILESYSTEM

In this post, we will see how to save hive query result to a HIVE TABLE or FILE SYSTEM.

We can achieve this by using the INSERT clause.

Let say we have customer table
hive> select * from customer;

Saving Query Results to a Table
If we want to load customers who are from city_1 to a table:
hive> INSERT OVERWRITE TABLE customers_city1 SELECT * FROM customers WHERE city='city_1';

hive> select * from customers_city1;

If we don't want to delete existing data, then use below query:
hive> INSERT INTO TABLE customers_city1 SELECT * FROM customers WHERE city='city_1';

Note: Destination table must already exists

Saving Query Results to a FileSystem

If we want to save query result to a Hadoop FileSystem (HDFS), use below query:
hive> INSERT OVERWRITE DIRECTORY '/home/cloudera/result/customers' SELECT * FROM customers WHERE city='city_1';

Add LOCAL keyword to save query result to local filesystem:
hive> INSERT OVERWRITE LOCAL DIRECTORY '/home/cloudera/customers' SELECT * FROM customers WHERE city='city_1';


Note: Writes query result in text files with default delimiter '\t'.