CREATE TABLE

CREATE TABLE creates an empty table or registers existing Parquet files as a new table’s initial data.

Example

CREATE TABLE events (
  id BIGINT,
  region VARCHAR,
  ts TIMESTAMP
);

Syntax

CREATE TABLE [IF NOT EXISTS] [[datastore.]schema.]table (
  column_name data_type [, ...]
) [WITH (option = value [, ...])];

Table name and columns

Use schema.table or datastore.schema.table to choose a namespace. The schema must exist; create one with CREATE SCHEMA. Unqualified names use the default datastore and schema.

Each column has a name and a data type. IF NOT EXISTS leaves an existing table in place.

Table options

WITH (...) accepts the following options. Unknown option names are rejected.

Option	Value	Purpose
`partition_by`	Comma-separated column names in a string	Partition newly written files.
`sort_by`	Comma-separated column names in a string	Sort newly written rows.
`with_pre_existing_parquets`	Directory path in a string	Adopt existing Parquet files.

Partitioning

partition_by selects partition columns in the declared order. Every named column must exist in the table declaration.

CREATE TABLE regional_events (id BIGINT, region VARCHAR)
WITH (partition_by = 'region');

Sorting

sort_by selects sort columns in the declared order. It can be combined with partitioning:

CREATE TABLE sorted_events (id BIGINT, region VARCHAR, ts TIMESTAMP)
WITH (partition_by = 'region', sort_by = 'ts');

Sorting controls the layout of newly written rows. Use ORDER BY in a query when its returned rows need a particular order.

Adopt existing Parquet files

with_pre_existing_parquets adopts Parquet files directly under a directory. The declared schema must match those files.

CREATE TABLE imported_events (id BIGINT, region VARCHAR, ts TIMESTAMP)
WITH (with_pre_existing_parquets = 'incoming/events');

The option takes a plain storage path, not a URL. A relative path is resolved within the datastore’s storage. Files remain in their original directory; Pivot records them in the new table without moving or rewriting them during creation.

Limitations

Temporary tables, constraints, CREATE OR REPLACE TABLE, and CREATE TABLE ... AS SELECT are not supported.