topic Re: Issue in renaming the table in Data Engineering

Issue in renaming the table

Rajasaiharish — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 14:22:56 GMT

We have tried to rename a table

Ex: alter rename tablea to tableb

while we checked the table b properties we are seeing the tableb location is being pointed to tablea location.

Re: Issue in renaming the table

Khaja_Zaffer — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 14:34:33 GMT

Hello @Rajasaiharish

Thats expected behaviour

so if you run DESCRIBE EXTENDED tableb; you might see that it could point the same location as tablea.

we are just renaming not changing the location right?

Re: Issue in renaming the table

szymon_dybczak — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 14:39:02 GMT

Hi @Rajasaiharish ,

Just like @Khaja_Zaffer correctly suggested - renaming table doesn't change its location. If you want to change location as well use following command:

ALTER TABLE table_name SET LOCATION path_to_the_new_location

Re: Issue in renaming the table

K_Anudeep — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 15:15:36 GMT

Hello @Rajasaiharish ,

The above is expected by design.ALTER TABLE RENAME TO updates only the table name in the catalog.The underlying Delta log + data files remain in the original storage location

Try setting the location to a new location

ALTER TABLE table_name SET LOCATION path_to_the_new_location

or drop and recreate or run a CRTAS as a solution

Re: Issue in renaming the table

Rajasaiharish — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 15:20:38 GMT

In general in CDP environment,we just rename the table and underlying location also gets changed

Re: Issue in renaming the table

K_Anudeep — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 15:29:27 GMT

Hi @Rajasaiharish !
Yes, that's correct! In hive/CDP (HMS word) rename operation (ALTER TABLE RENAME) automatically renames the directory in HDFS to match because Hive Metastore directly controls both the metadata and the storage path.

But in Databricks, UC separates logical metadata (catalogue/schema/table) from physical storage.

Re: Issue in renaming the table

Rajasaiharish — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 15:33:31 GMT

So after step alter table a to table b we need to run alter table table name set location ? And we did not faced this in our cdp environment

Re: Issue in renaming the table

Khaja_Zaffer — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 23:36:51 GMT

Thats correct, in databricks you need to mention in detail sir.

Again my solution is not the solution marked. I need to improve solution details.