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')