topic Re: How to Convert a Lateral View to a Table Reference in Data Engineering

How to Convert a Lateral View to a Table Reference

BennyBoyW — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 10:21:50 GMT

Hi All

I have a view creation script in DataBricks which uses a lateral view to access columns in a structure held within an array field.

It is working fine but I have noted that the LATERAL VIEW is now depracated and that I should be using a TABLE REFERENCE instead.

I just cannot get the command to work however, so my question is - how do I convert the following to a TABLE REFERENCE ?

CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW newview

SELECT

t1.field1

, structureitem.field2

, structureitem.field3

FROM table1 AS t1, table2 AS t2

LATERAL VIEW EXPLODE(t1.structure) AS structureitem

where t1.id = t2.id;

Re: How to Convert a Lateral View to a Table Reference

saurabh18cs — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 10:47:33 GMT

Hi try this

CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW newview AS

SELECT

t1.field1,

structureitem.field2,

structureitem.field3

FROM table1 AS t1

JOIN table2 AS t2

ON t1.id = t2.id

JOIN LATERAL TABLE(explode(t1.structure)) AS structureitem

ON TRUE;

Re: How to Convert a Lateral View to a Table Reference

BennyBoyW — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 11:33:38 GMT

Hi Again. Thank you for the extremely quick reply !

Unfortunately DataBricks doesn't seem to like the syntax above and returns the error :

[UNRESOLVABLE_TABLE_VALUED_FUNCTION] Could not resolve TABLE to a table-valued function. Please make sure that TABLE is defined as a table-valued function and that all required parameters are provided correctly. If TABLE is not defined, please create the table-valued function before using it.

Re: How to Convert a Lateral View to a Table Reference

balajij8 — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 15:32:13 GMT

You can use

CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW newview

SELECT

t1.field1,

item.field2,

item.field3

FROM table1 AS t1

INNER JOIN table2 AS t2 ON t1.id = t2.id

, LATERAL EXPLODE(t1.structure) AS structureitem(item)

Re: How to Convert a Lateral View to a Table Reference

BennyBoyW — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 11:52:30 GMT

- That's it !!!!!
Thank you so much 😁