Databricks Certified Data Engineer - Associate
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In a scenario where a data engineer is working with Apache Spark and seeks to manage tables within a Spark SQL environment, the engineer decides to remove a table named my_table. This table is integrated into a data lake or similar storage system that Spark SQL can interact with. The engineer executes the command DROP TABLE IF EXISTS my_table; intending to remove the table. Upon executing this command, it is observed that not only has the table been dropped, but also the associated data files and metadata files have been removed from the underlying file system. What could be the reason for the deletion of all these files as a result of executing this command?
Explanation:
In Spark SQL, when a table is managed, both the metadata and the actual data files are managed by the SQL engine. When the DROP TABLE command is used on a managed table, it deletes not only the metadata but also the underlying data files associated with that table from the file system. Therefore, the reason for the deletion of both the metadata and data files is that the table was managed.