Unable to drop a schema in Databricks when using AWS Glue Data Catalog as an external metastore

Drop the schema from the external metastore side.

Written by saikumar.divvela

Last published at: September 8th, 2025

Problem

You’re using AWS Glue Data Catalog (Glue) as your external Hive metastore. When you attempt to drop a schema from Databricks, you encounter the following error. 

Can not create a Path from an empty string

 

The error persists when you try to use the `CASCADE` option with the `DROP SCHEMA` command, as shown in the following screenshot. 

 

Cause

Glue has invalid metadata. Specifically, the schema does not have a valid locationUri value. The location property in Glue is missing or empty. 

 

When you try to drop a schema from Databricks, Databricks checks the schema’s storage location. If the schema’s locationUri in Glue is not set, or is an empty string, Databricks cannot resolve it into a valid path. This results in the error “Can not create a Path from an empty string”.

 

Solution

Remove the schema directly from Glue instead.

  1. Verify the schema exists in Glue and review its properties, especially the locationUri.
  2. Delete the schema using either the AWS Glue console or the AWS CLI. For more information, review the AWS Deleting a schema or registry documentation.