Unable to read external Hive Metastore tables on SQL warehouses

Manually set the appropriate Apache Spark configurations in your admin settings for SQL warehouses.

Written by parth.sundarka

Last published at: January 20th, 2025

Problem

When using a Databricks SQL warehouse to run queries against tables on an external Hive metastore (HMS), you receive an error. 

 

[TABLE_OR_VIEW_NOT_FOUND] The table or view `<table-name>` cannot be found.

 

Cause

A global init script is configured in Databricks to set the necessary Apache Spark configurations for an external HMS, but SQL warehouses do not execute global init scripts. 

 

Solution

Manually set the appropriate Spark configurations in your admin settings for SQL warehouses to enable your warehouse to access an external HMS table.

 

For details, review the Enable data access configuration (AWS | Azure | GCP) documentation.