[HIVE-19489] Disable stats autogather for external tables

• Type: Sub-task
• Status: Open
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Unresolved
• Component/s: Statistics
• Assignee: Jason Dere
• Reporter: Jason Dere
• Created: 10/May/18 16:45
• Updated: 27/Jul/18 21:24

Description

Hive auto-gather of table statistics can result in incorrect generation of stats (and the stats being marked as accurate) in the case of external tables where the data is being written by external apps.
To avoid this issue, stats autogather will be disabled on external tables when loading/inserting into a table with existing data, if HIVE_DISABLE_UNSAFE_EXTERNALTABLE_OPERATIONS is enabled. In this situation, users should rely on explicitly calling ANALYZE TABLE on their external tables to make sure the stats are kept up-to-date.
Autogather of stats will still be allowed to occur on external tables in the case of INSERT OVERWRITE or LOAD DATA OVERWRITE, since the existing data is being removed and so the stats calculated on the inserted/loaded data should be accurate.

Issue Links

• is related to: HIVE-18743 CREATE TABLE on S3 data can be extremely slow. DO_NOT_UPDATE_STATS workaround is buggy.