using the SYNC TABLE command with AWS Glue tables

JameDavi_51481
Contributor

‎07-25-2023 04:02 PM

According to the docs, we should be able to use SYNC TABLE to 'upgrade' a table from a Hive metastore to Unity Catalog. We are using AWS Glue as our Hive Metastore, but tables created in Glue do not seem to be set up in a format that Databricks likes. When we try to run `SYNC TABLE` on a Glue table, DBSQL returns the error message `[UPGRADE_NOT_SUPPORTED.HIVE_SERDE] Table is not eligible for upgrade from Hive Metastore to Unity Catalog. Reason: Hive SerDe table.`

Has anyone successfully gotten SYNC TABLE or SYNC SCHEMA working where a Glue table is the source?

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Vidhi_Khaitan
Databricks Employee
Databricks Employee

‎05-15-2025 01:22 AM

Hi team,
The issue arises because Unity Catalog's SYNC command cannot process tables that were created using the Hive SerDe format in the hive_metastore catalog. This means that any attempts to upgrade such tables will fail.

You need to convert your Hive SerDe tables to Delta format using the following command:
CONVERT TO DELTA hive_metastore.<database-name>.<table-name>;

Then after converting the table to Delta format, you can issue the SYNC command to upgrade the table to Unity Catalog using:
SYNC hive_metastore.<database-name>.<table-name> TO unity_catalog.<database-name>.<table-name>;

Let me know if this helps!

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