(Glue-2008) Create a Glue table from external table

Owned by SNP
Aug 17, 2020
2 min read

Using this functionality, you can create a Glue table from a table or a structure that exists on external storage (e.g. Hive on Hadoop, Redshift table or HANA Native structure).

Glue table will be in this case only a pointer to the external table.

After a Glue table is created, you can use it for all available features: Data Browser, Data extractions, and InfoProviders. 



Procedure

  1. Go to Glue Data Dictionary  
  2. Press Create Glue table from an external table icon
  3. Specify the following popup fields: 
  • Glue Table – the name for newly created Glue Table
  • Description – description of new Glue Table
  • External table – the name of the existing External table from which Glue Table will be created
  • Object is view – is external object a view?
  • Storage ID – defines storage where the external table exists
  • Package – the package where new Glue Table will be created


4. Proceed


5. New Glue table is created.


Data types of created Glue table are automatically converted from external storage types to standard SAP types. 

E.g. in case the Glue table is created based on a HIVE table, the field types are automatically converted from HIVE types.


Please note that data elements must be defined manually if needed.



Practical use-cases:

Storage to Storage extractor - you can extract data between 2 external storages. You only need to create Glue tables from external storages and create an extractor for data transfer.

In case of data extraction to .csv files, usually, the customer has custom processing of the data. If such processing generates tables from the provided data, using the external Glue table (pointing to the generated table) you can validate the processed data with original SAP data.