Impala Interactive Shell

You can use the Impala shell tool (impala-shell) to connect to an Impala service. The shell allows you to set up databases and tables, insert data, and issue queries. For ad hoc queries and exploration, you can submit SQL statements in an interactive session. The impala-shell interpreter accepts all the same SQL statements listed in Impala SQL Statements, plus some shell-only commands that you can use for tuning performance and diagnosing problems.

To automate your work, you can specify command-line options to process a single statement or a script file. (Other avenues for Impala automation via python are provided by Impyla or ODBC.)

Installing

$ pip install impala-shell

Online documentation

• Impala Shell Documentation
• Apache Impala Documentation

Quickstart

Non-interactive mode

Processing a single query, e.g., show tables:

$ impala-shell -i impalad-host.domain.com -d some_database -q 'show tables'

Processing a text file with a series of queries:

$ impala-shell -i impalad-host.domain.com -d some_database -f /path/to/queries.sql

Launching the interactive shell

To connect to an impalad host at the default service port (21000):

$ impala-shell -i impalad-host.domain.com
Starting Impala Shell without Kerberos authentication
Connected to impalad-host.domain.com:21000
Server version: impalad version 2.11.0-SNAPSHOT RELEASE (build d4596f9ca3ea32a8008cdc809a7ac9a3dea47962)
***********************************************************************************
Welcome to the Impala shell.
(Impala Shell v3.0.0-SNAPSHOT (73e90d2) built on Thu Mar  8 00:59:00 PST 2018)

The '-B' command line flag turns off pretty-printing for query results. Use this
flag to remove formatting from results you want to save for later, or to benchmark
Impala.
***********************************************************************************
[impalad-host.domain.com:21000] >

Launching the interactive shell (secure mode)

To connect to a secure host using kerberos and SSL:

$ impala-shell -k --ssl --verify_cert -i impalad-secure-host.domain.com

The command above will try to verify the server with default OpenSSL CA certificates. Set --ca_cert to use a custom certificate or remove --verify_cert to skip verification.

Disconnecting

To exit the shell when running interactively, press Ctrl-D at the shell prompt.