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HIVE Data Types

Hive data types are categorized in numeric types, string types, misc types, and complex types. A list of Hive data types is given below.

Integer Types

Type	Size	Range
TINYINT	1-byte signed integer	-128 to 127
SMALLINT	2-byte signed integer	32,768 to 32,767
INT	4-byte signed integer	2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647
BIGINT	8-byte signed integer	-9,223,372,036,854,775,808 to 9,223,372,036,854,775,807

Decimal Type

Type	Size	Range
FLOAT	4-byte	Single precision floating point number
DOUBLE	8-byte	Double precision floating point number

Date/Time Types

TIMESTAMP

• It supports traditional UNIX timestamp with optional nanosecond precision.
• As Integer numeric type, it is interpreted as UNIX timestamp in seconds.
• As Floating point numeric type, it is interpreted as UNIX timestamp in seconds with decimal precision.
• As string, it follows java.sql.Timestamp format “YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS.fffffffff” (9 decimal place precision)

DATES

The Date value is used to specify a particular year, month and day, in the form YYYY–MM–DD. However, it didn’t provide the time of the day. The range of Date type lies between 0000–01–01 to 9999–12–31.

String Types

STRING

The string is a sequence of characters. It values can be enclosed within single quotes (‘) or double quotes (“).

Varchar

The varchar is a variable length type whose range lies between 1 and 65535, which specifies that the maximum number of characters allowed in the character string.

CHAR

The char is a fixed-length type whose maximum length is fixed at 255.

Complex Type

Type	Size	Range
Struct	It is similar to C struct or an object where fields are accessed using the “dot” notation.	struct(‘James’,’Roy’)
Map	It contains the key-value tuples where the fields are accessed using array notation.	map(‘first’,’James’,’last’,’Roy’)
Array	It is a collection of similar type of values that indexable using zero-based integers.	array(‘James’,’Roy’)