Hive SET LOCATION command not changing the location of the database

Question

Hi. I am facing some problems with Hive. I want to change the location of a database in Hive and for that I am using the SET LOCATION command as follows:

ALTER DATABASE employee SET LOCATION <hdfs_path>;

But the location of this database is still the same. I did not get any errors so I am assuming that the command worked fine but I don't see the change reflecting. 

Answer 1

The SET LOCATION command does not change the location of the existing tables or partitions. No metadata of the existing tables or partitions are changed. What SET LOCATION does is, it changes the parent directory of the Hive database and all the new data is stored in the newly mentioned location.