how to merge multiple parquet files to single parquet file using linux or hdfs command?

Question

I have multiple small parquet files generated as output of hive ql job, i would like to merge the output files to single parquet file?

what is the best way to do it using some hdfs or linux commands?

we used to merge the text files using cat command, but will this work for parquet as well? Can we do it using HiveQL itself when writing output files like how we do it using repartition or coalesc method in spark?

Answer 1

According to this https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/PARQUET-460 Now you can download the source code and compile parquet-tools which is built in merge command.

java -jar ./target/parquet-tools-1.8.2-SNAPSHOT.jar merge /input_directory/
        /output_idr/file_name

Or using a tool like https://github.com/stripe/herringbone

Answer 2

You can also do it using HiveQL itself, if your execution engine is mapreduce.

You can set a flag for your query, which causes hive to merge small files at the end of your job:

SET hive.merge.mapredfiles=true;

or

SET hive.merge.mapfiles=true;

if your job is a map-only job.

This will cause the hive job to automatically merge many small parquet files into fewer big files. You can control the number of output files with by adjusting hive.merge.size.per.task setting. If you want to have just one file, make sure you set it to a value which is always larger than the size of your output. Also, make sure to adjust hive.merge.smallfiles.avgsize accordingly. Set it to a very low value if you want to make sure that hive always merges files. You can read more about this settings in hive documentation.