Conversion from HiveVarchar to String Fails

Problem

When importing on linking to Hive data with column type Varchar, the following error is logged when executing a job:

Caused by: java.lang.IllegalStateException: No type converter found for source type class org.apache.hadoop.hive.common.type.HiveVarchar and target type STRING

Cause

This is a known limitation with some older versions of Datameer. Native support for Hive Varchar was introduced in Datameer 5.3.

Solution

To work-around this issue in an older version of Datameer, create a custom Hive query that casts the Varchar columns as Strings.

Example:

SELECT CAST(my_varchar_column AS STRING) FROM my_hive_table

To resolve this issue, upgrade to Datameer 5.3 or later.