Problem

While trying to upgrade a table from Hive metastore to Unity Catalog, you encounter the following error. 

[UPGRADE_NOT_SUPPORTED.HIVE_SERDE] Table is not eligible for upgrade from Hive Metastore to Unity Catalog. Reason: Hive SerDe table. SQLSTATE: 0AKUC.

Cause

The error occurs because the Unity Catalog SYNC command cannot process tables created using the Hive SerDe format in the hive_metastore catalog.

This issue arises during the SYNC process and affects tables located in the cloud storage. The table was previously accessible in Databricks using the hive_metastore catalog but now encounters obstacles during migration to UC.

Solution

1. Convert your Hive SerDe tables to Delta format.

CONVERT TO DELTA hive_metastore.<database-name>.<table-name>;

2. Issue the SYNC command to upgrade the tables to Unity Catalog.

SYNC hive_metastore.<database-name>.<table-name> TO unity_catalog.<database-name>.<table-name>;

For more information, please refer to the SYNC (AWS | Azure | GCP) documentation.