Currently you can't use comments with custom serde's. Look into MetaStoreUtils.getFieldsFromDeserializer and you'll see "from deserializer" is hard-coded as the comment.
This is definitely an area for improvement. Is your serde reporting columns, or do you have them stored in the metastore? If you "describe extended" your table do you see the comments stored in the metastore? --travis On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 4:17 PM, Stephen Scaffid <sscaff...@tripadvisor.com> wrote: > I have a custom SerDe we are using and it works well. However, we have one > issue with it - an application used to allow users to maintain table and > column descriptions does not work with it. > > We store the descriptions as "comments" on the tables and columns, via a > python script that simply executes the necessary HQL to set the comment, but > then uses the Hive class to retrieve it from metadata. > > The problem is that any comment we try to set ends up getting set to "from > deserializer" on any table using our custom SerDe. This doesn't happen with > tables using the LazySimpleSerDe. > > Is there a way to make our SerDe work with comments?
