12.2. Hive Connector

The Hive connector allows querying data stored in a Hive data warehouse. Hive is a combination of three components:

Data files in varying formats that are typically stored in the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) or in Amazon S3.
Metadata about how the data files are mapped to schemas and tables. This metadata is stored in a database such as MySQL and is accessed via the Hive metastore service.
A query language called HiveQL. This query language is executed on a distributed computing framework such as MapReduce or Tez.

Presto only uses the first two components: the data and the metadata. It does not use HiveQL or any part of Hive’s execution environment.

Supported File Types

The following file types are supported for the Hive connector:

ORC
RCFile
TEXT
Parquet

Configuration

Presto includes Hive connectors for multiple versions of Hadoop:

hive-hadoop2: Apache Hadoop 2.x
hive-cdh5: Cloudera CDH 5

Create /etc/presto/catalog/hive.properties with the following contents to mount the hive-hadoop2 connector as the hive catalog, replacing hive-hadoop2 with the proper connector for your version of Hadoop and example.net:9083 with the correct host and port for your Hive metastore Thrift service:

connector.name=hive-hadoop2
hive.metastore.uri=thrift://example.net:9083

Additionally, you should add the following property to jvm.config, replacing <hdfs_username> with your hdfs user name:

-DHADOOP_USER_NAME=<hdfs_username>

Multiple Hive Clusters

You can have as many catalogs as you need, so if you have additional Hive clusters, simply add another properties file to /etc/presto/catalog with a different name (making sure it ends in .properties). For example, if you name the property file sales.properties, Presto will create a catalog named sales using the configured connector.

HDFS Configuration

For basic setups, Presto configures the HDFS client automatically and does not require any configuration files. In some cases, such as when using federated HDFS or NameNode high availability, it is necessary to specify additional HDFS client options in order to access your HDFS cluster. To do so, add the hive.config.resources property to reference your HDFS config files:

hive.config.resources=/etc/hadoop/conf/core-site.xml,/etc/hadoop/conf/hdfs-site.xml

Only specify additional configuration files if necessary for your setup. We also recommend reducing the configuration files to have the minimum set of required properties, as additional properties may cause problems.

The configuration files must exist on all Presto nodes. If you are referencing existing Hadoop config files, make sure to copy them to any Presto nodes that are not running Hadoop.

Accessing Hadoop clusters protected with Kerberos authentication

Kerberos authentication is currently supported for both HDFS and the Hive metastore.

However there are still a few limitations:

Kerberos authentication is only supported for the hive-hadoop2 and hive-cdh5 connectors.
Kerberos authentication by ticket cache is not yet supported.

The properties that apply to Hive connector security are listed in the Configuration Properties table. Please see the Hive Security Configuration section for a more detailed discussion of the security options in the Hive connector.

HDFS Permissions

Before running any CREATE TABLE or CREATE TABLE ... AS statements for Hive tables in Presto, you need to check that the operating system user running the Presto server has access to the Hive warehouse directory on HDFS. The Hive warehouse directory is specified by the configuration variable hive.metastore.warehouse.dir in hive-site.xml, and the default value is /user/hive/warehouse. If that is not the case, either add the following to jvm.config on all of the nodes: -DHADOOP_USER_NAME=USER, where USER is an operating system user that has proper permissions for the Hive warehouse directory, or start the Presto server as a user with similar permissions. The hive user generally works as USER, since Hive is often started with the hive user. If you run into HDFS permissions problems on CREATE TABLE ... AS, remove /tmp/presto-* on HDFS, fix the user as described above, then restart all of the Presto servers.

Configuration Properties

Property Name	Description	Default
`hive.metastore.uri`	The URI(s) of the Hive metastore to connect to using the Thrift protocol. If multiple URIs are provided, the first URI is used by default and the rest of the URIs are fallback metastores. This property is required. Example: `thrift://192.0.2.3:9083` or `thrift://192.0.2.3:9083,thrift://192.0.2.4:9083`
`hive.config.resources`	An optional comma-separated list of HDFS configuration files. These files must exist on the machines running Presto. Only specify this if absolutely necessary to access HDFS. Example: `/etc/hdfs-site.xml`
`hive.storage-format`	The default file format used when creating new tables.	`RCBINARY`
`hive.compression-codec`	The compression codec to use when writing files.	`GZIP`
`hive.force-local-scheduling`	See tuning section	`false`
`hive.allow-drop-table`	Allow the Hive connector to drop tables.	`false`
`hive.allow-rename-table`	Allow the Hive connector to rename tables.	`false`
`hive.respect-table-format`	Should new partitions be written using the existing table format or the default Presto format?	`true`
`hive.immutable-partitions`	Can new data be inserted into existing partitions?	`false`
`hive.max-partitions-per-writers`	Maximum number of partitions per writer.	100
`hive.s3.sse.enabled`	Enable S3 server-side encryption.	`false`
`hive.metastore.authentication.type`	Hive metastore authentication type. Possible values are `NONE` or `KERBEROS`.	`NONE`
`hive.metastore.service.principal`	The Kerberos principal of the Hive metastore service.
`hive.metastore.client.principal`	The Kerberos principal that Presto will use when connecting to the Hive metastore service.
`hive.metastore.client.keytab`	Hive metastore client keytab location.
`hive.hdfs.authentication.type`	HDFS authentication type. Possible values are `NONE` or `KERBEROS`.	`NONE`
`hive.hdfs.impersonation.enabled`	Enable HDFS end user impersonation.	`false`
`hive.hdfs.presto.principal`	The Kerberos principal that Presto will use when connecting to HDFS.
`hive.hdfs.presto.keytab`	HDFS client keytab location.
`hive.multi-file-bucketing.enabled`	Enable support for multiple files per bucket for Hive clustered tables. See Clustered hive tables support	`false`
`hive.empty-bucketed-partitions.enabled`	Enable support for clustered tables with empty partitions. See Clustered hive tables support	`false`

Amazon S3 Configuration

The Hive connector also allows querying data stored in Amazon S3.

To access tables stored in S3, you must specify the AWS credential properties hive.s3.aws-access-key and hive.s3.aws-secret-key. Alternatively, you can use hive.s3.use-instance-credentials which if set to true, enables retrieving temporary instance profile AWS credentials.

SQL Limitation for S3 tables

The SQL support for S3 tables is the same as for HDFS tables. Presto does not support creating external tables in Hive (both HDFS and S3). If you want to create a table in Hive with data in S3, you have to do it from Hive.

Also, CREATE TABLE..AS query, where query is a SELECT query on the S3 table will not create the table on S3. If you want to load data back to S3, you need to use INSERT INTO command.

Amazon S3 Configuration Properties

Property Name	Description	Default
`hive.s3.aws-access-key`	AWS Access key.
`hive.s3.aws-secret-key`	AWS Secret key.
`hive.s3.use-instance-credentials`	Instance profile credentials to use. This property is unused if default credential properties are added.	`true`
`hive.s3.connect-timeout`	Amount of time that the HTTP connection will wait to establish a connection before giving up.	`5s`
`hive.s3.socket-timeout`	Amount of time to wait for data to be transferred over an established, open connection before the connection times out and is closed.	`5s`
`hive.s3.max-error-retries`	Maximum retry count for retriable errors.	`10`
`hive.s3.max-connections`	See tuning section.	`500`
`hive.s3.ssl.enabled`	Protocol to connect to AWS (HTTP or HTTPS).	`true`
`hive.s3.pin-client-to-current-region`	Use current AWS region.	`false`
`hive.s3.max-backoff-time`	Maximum value of sleep time allowed during data read retry mechanism. Uses exponential backoff pattern ranging from 1s to this value.	`10 minutes`
`hive.s3.max-retry-time`	Retries read attempt till this threshold is reached or `hive.s3.max-client-retries` value is crossed.	`10 minutes`
`hive.s3.max-client-retries`	Reader fails if either `hive.s3.max-retry-time` is reached or the number of attempts hits this value.	`3`
`hive.s3.multipart.min-file-size`	See tuning section.	`16MB`
`hive.s3.multipart.min-part-size`	See tuning section.	`5MB`
`hive.s3.sse.enabled`	Enable S3 server side encryption.	`false`
`hive.s3.staging-directory`	Temporary directory for staging files before uploading to S3.	`/tmp`

Querying Hive Tables

The following table is an example Hive table from the Hive Tutorial. It can be created in Hive (not in Presto) using the following Hive CREATE TABLE command:

hive> CREATE TABLE page_view (
    >   viewTime INT,
    >   userid BIGINT,
    >   page_url STRING,
    >   referrer_url STRING,
    >   ip STRING COMMENT 'IP Address of the User')
    > COMMENT 'This is the page view table'
    > PARTITIONED BY (dt STRING, country STRING)
    > STORED AS SEQUENCEFILE;
OK
Time taken: 3.644 seconds

Assuming that this table was created in the web schema in Hive, this table can be described in Presto:

DESCRIBE hive.web.page_view;

    Column    |  Type   | Null | Partition Key |        Comment
--------------+---------+------+---------------+------------------------
 viewtime     | bigint  | true | false         |
 userid       | bigint  | true | false         |
 page_url     | varchar | true | false         |
 referrer_url | varchar | true | false         |
 ip           | varchar | true | false         | IP Address of the User
 dt           | varchar | true | true          |
 country      | varchar | true | true          |
(7 rows)

This table can then be queried in Presto:

SELECT * FROM hive.web.page_view;

Clustered hive tables support

By default presto supports only one data file per bucket per partition for clustered tables (Hive tables declared with CLUSTERED BY clause). If number of files does not match number of buckets exception would be thrown.

To enable support for cases where there are more than one file per bucket, when multiple INSERTs are done to a single partition of the clustered table, you can use:

hive.multi-file-bucketing.enabled config property

multi_file_bucketing_enabled session property (using SET SESSION <connector_name>.multi_file_bucketing_enabled)

Config property changes behaviour globally and session property can be used on per query basis. The default value of session property is taken from config property.

If support for multiple files per bucket is enabled Presto will group the files in partition directory. It will sort filenames lexicographically. Then it will treat part of filename up to first underscore character as bucket key. This pattern matches naming convention of files in directory when Hive is used to inject data into table.

Presto will still validate if number of file groups matches number of buckets declared for table and fail if it does not.

Similarly by default empty partitions (partitions with no files) are not allowed for clustered Hive tables. To enable support for empty paritions you can use:

hive.empty-bucketed-partitions.enabled config property

empty_bucketed_partitions_enabled session property (using SET SESSION <connector_name>.empty_buckets_enabled)

Tuning

The following configuration properties may have an impact on connector performance:

`hive.assume-canonical-partition-keys`

Type: Boolean

Default value: false

Description: Enable optimized metastore partition fetching for non-string partition keys. Setting this property allows to filter non-string partition keys while reading them from hive, based on the assumption that they are stored in canonical (java) format. This is disabled by default as hive allows to use non-canonical format as well (eg. boolean value false may be represented as 0, false, False and more). Used correctly this property may drastically improve read time by reducing number of partition loaded from hive. Setting this property for non-canonical data format may cause erratic behavior.

`hive.domain-compaction-threshold`

Type: Integer (at least 1)

Default value: 100

Description: Maximum number of ranges/values allowed while reading hive data without compacting it. A higher value will cause more data fragmentation but allow the use of the row skipping feature when reading ORC data. Increasing this value may have a large impact on IN and OR clause performance in scenarios making use of row skipping.

`hive.force-local-scheduling`

Type: Boolean

Default value: false

Description: Force splits to be scheduled on the same node (ignoring normal node selection procedures) as the Hadoop DataNode process serving the split data. This is useful for installations where Presto is collocated with every DataNode and may increase queries time significantly. The drawback may be that if some data are accessed more often, the utilization of some nodes may be low even if the whole system is heavy loaded. See also node-scheduler.network-topology if less strict constrain is preferred - especially if some nodes are overloaded and other are not fully utilized.

`hive.max-initial-split-size`

Type: String (data size)

Default value: hive.max-split-size / 2 (32 MB)

Description: This property describes the maximum size of the first hive.max-initial-splits splits created for a query. the logic behind initial splits is described in hive.max-initial-splits. Lower values will increase concurrency for small queries. This property represents the maximum size, as the real size may be lower when the amount of data to read is less than hive.max-initial-split-size (e.g. at the end of a block on a DataNode).

`hive.max-initial-splits`

Type: Integer

Default value: 200

Description: This property describes how many splits may be initially created for a single query using hive.max-initial-split-size instead of hive.max-split-size. A higher value will force more splits to have a smaller size (hive.max-initial-splits is expected to be smaller than hive.max-split-size), effectively increasing the definition of what is considered a “small query”. The purpose of the smaller split size for the initial splits is to increase concurrency for smaller queries.

`hive.max-outstanding-splits`

Type: Integer (at least 1)

Default value: 1000

Description: Limit on the nubmer of splits waiting to be served by a split source. After reaching this limit, writers will stop writing new splits until some of hteme are used by workers. Higher values will increase memory usage, but allow IO to be concentrated at one time, which may be faster and increase resource utilization.

`hive.max-partitions-per-writers`

Type: Integer (at least 1)

Default value: 100

Description: Maximum number of partitions per writer. A query will fail if it requires more partitions per writer than allowed by this property. It can be helpful to have queries beyond the expected maximum partitions to fail to help with error detection. Also it may allow to preactivly avoid out of memory problem.

`hive.max-split-iterator-threads`

Type: Integer (at least 1)

Default value: 1000

Description: This property describes how many threads may be used to iterate through splits when loading them to the worker nodes. A higher value may increase parallelism, but increased concurrency may cause too much time to be spent on context switching.

`hive.max-split-size`

Type: String (data size)

Default value: 64 MB

Description: The maximum size of splits created after the initial splits. The logic for initial splits is described in hive.max-initial-splits. A higher value will reduce parallelism. This may be desirable for very large queries and a stable cluster because it allows for more efficient processing of local data without the context switching, synchronization and data collection that result from parallelization. The optimal value should be aligned with the average query size in the system.

`hive.metastore.partition-batch-size.max`

Type: Integer (at least 1)

Default value: 100

Description: This together with hive.metastore.partition-batch-size.min defines the range of partition sizes read from Hive. The first partition is always of size hive.metastore.partition-batch-size.min and each following partition is two times bigger than previous up to hive.mestastore.partition-batch-size.max (the formula for partition size n is min(hive.metastore.partition-batch-size.max, (2``^``n) * hive.metastore.partition-batch-size.min)). This algorithm allows for live adjustment of partition size according to the processing requirements. If the queries in the system will differ significantly from each other in size, then this range should be extended to better adjust to processing requirements. If the queries in the system will mostly be of the same size, then setting both values to the same maximally tuned value may give a slight edge in processing time.

`hive.metastore.partition-batch-size.min`

Type: Integer (at least 1)

Default value: 10

Description: See hive.metastore.partition-batch-size.max.

`hive.orc.max-buffer-size`

Type: String (data size)

Default value: 8 MB

Description: Serves as default value for orc_max_buffer_size session properties defining max size of ORC read operators. Higher value will allow bigger chunks to be processed but will decrease concurrency level.

`hive.orc.max-merge-distance`

Type: String (data size)

Default value: 1 MB

Description: Serves as the default value for the orc_max_merge_distance session property. Two reads from an ORC file may be merged into a single read if the distance between the requested data ranges in the data source is less than or equal to this value.

`hive.orc.stream-buffer-size`

Type: String (data size)

Default value: 8 MB

Description: Serves as the default value for the orc_max_buffer_size session property. It defines the maximum size of ORC read operators. A higher value will allow bigger chunks to be processed, but will decrease concurrency.

`hive.orc.use-column-names`

Type: Boolean

Default value: false

Description: Access ORC columns using names from the file. By default, Hive access columns in ORC files using the order recoded in the Hive metastore. Setting this property allows to use columns names recorded in the ORC file instead.

`hive.parquet-optimized-reader.enabled`

Type: Boolean

Default value: false

Description: Deprecated Serves as default value for parquet_optimized_reader_enabled session property. Enables number of reader improvements introduced by alternative parquet implementation. The new reader supports vectorized reads, lazy loading, and predicate push down, all of which make the reader more efficient and typically reduces wall clock time for a query. However as the code has changed significantly it may or may not introduce some minor issues, so it can be disabled if some problems with environment are noticed. This property enables/disables all optimizations except predicate push down as it is managed by hive.parquet-predicate-pushdown.enabled property.

`hive.parquet-predicate-pushdown.enabled`

Type: Boolean

Default value: false

Description: Deprecated Serves as default value for parquet_predicate_pushdown_enabled sesssion property. See hive.parquet-optimized-reader.enabled.

`hive.parquet.use-column-names`

Type: Boolean

Default value: false

Description: Access Parquet columns using names from the file. By default, columns in Parquet files are accessed by their ordinal position in the Hive metastore. Setting this property allows access by column name recorded in the Parquet file instead.

`hive.s3.max-connections`

Type: Integer (at least 1)

Default value: 500

Description: The maximum number of connections to S3 that may be open at a time by the S3 driver. A higher value may increase network utilization when a cluster is used on a high speed network. However, a higher values relies more on S3 servers being well configured for high parallelism.

`hive.s3.multipart.min-file-size`

Type: String (data size, at least 16 MB)

Default value: 16 MB

Description: This property describes how big a file must be to be uploaded to an S3 cluster using the multipart upload feature. Amazon recommends using 100 MB, but a lower value may increase upload parallelism and decrease the data lost/data sent ratio in unstable network conditions.

`hive.s3.multipart.min-part-size`

Type: String (data size, at least 5 MB)

Default value: 5 MB

Description: Defines the minimum part size for upload parts. Decreasing the minimum part size causes multipart uploads to be split into a larger number of smaller parts. Setting this value too low has a negative effect on transfer speeds, causing extra latency and network communication for each part.

There are also following session properties allowing to control connector behavior on single query basis:

`orc_max_buffer_size`

Type: String (data size)

Default value: hive.orc.max-buffer-size (8 MB)

Description: See hive.orc.max-buffer-size.

`orc_max_merge_distance`

Type: String (data size)

Default value: hive.orc.max-merge-distance (1 MB)

Description: See hive.orc.max-merge-distance.

`orc_stream_buffer_size`

Type: String (data size)

Default value: hive.orc.max-buffer-size (8 MB)

Description: See hive.orc.max-buffer-size.

Hive Connector Limitations

DELETE is only supported if the WHERE clause matches entire partitions.