Importing Azure table Data to Hive

Question

Hi All,
Have created a table in Azure. Can see the same in Azure Storage explorer under tables section.
I want to import this table's data to Hive.
For the blob/csv/text files we will use the syntax
CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE <tablename>(col1  string , col2 string)
ROW FORMAT DELIMITED FIELDS TERMINATED BY ',' LINES TERMINATED BY '\n'
LOCATION '/xxxx/xxxx/filename';
what's the syntax for importing the Azure table to Hive.
Please help.
Sriman N Vangala

Answer 1

Hi Sriman,
Unfortunately, Microsoft does not have a Azure table storage handler for HDInsight. It is in the roadmap for future but there is no specific dates on when it will be publically available. One of our product team members has a blog on how to achieve
this using a connector available from github. Please refer to that blog here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mostlytrue/archive/2014/04/04/analyzing-azure-table-storage-data-with-hdinsight.aspx
The set up process in the blog is not very straight forward and it requires some extra config steps as there is no out of the box solution at present. Also, the ATS Hive connector is a community driven project, not a part of HDInsight right now which means
it is not officially supported if you run into any problems with it later on.
One easier alternative would be to get the data out of Azure Tables into CSV in your storage account and process it normally. A lot of folks who have built service telemetry pipelines are doing so.
Hope this helps.
DebarchanS - MSFT