title: How do I drop all partitions at once in hive?
body: <p>Hive version 1.1</p>
  <p>I have a hive external table as below:</p>
  <pre><code> CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE `schedule_events`(
    `schedule_id` string COMMENT 'from deserializer',
    `service_key` string COMMENT 'from deserializer',
    `event_start_date_time` string COMMENT 'from deserializer',
    `event_id` string COMMENT 'from deserializer',
    `event_type` string COMMENT 'from deserializer',
    `transitional_key` string COMMENT 'from deserializer',
    `created_date_time` string COMMENT 'from deserializer',
    `bus_date` string COMMENT 'from deserializer')
      PARTITIONED BY (
                      `year` string,
                      `month` string,
                      `day` string)
     ROW FORMAT SERDE
     'org.apache.hadoop.hive.serde2.avro.AvroSerDe'
     STORED AS INPUTFORMAT
     'org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.io.avro.AvroContainerInputFormat'
     OUTPUTFORMAT
     'org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.io.avro.AvroContainerOutputFormat'
     LOCATION
     'hdfs://nameservice1/hadoop/raw/omega/scheduled_events'
    TBLPROPERTIES (
      'avro.schema.url'='hdfs:////hadoop/raw/omega/schema/schedule_events.avsc',
     'transient_lastDdlTime'='1505742141')
  </code></pre>
  <p>Now to drop a particular partition I can run a ALTER command as below</p>
  <pre><code> ALTER TABLE schedule_events DROP IF EXISTS PARTITION  (year='2016',month='06',day='01')
   Dropped the partition year=2016/month=06/day=01
  
   hive&gt; show partitions schedule_events;
   OK
   year=2017/month=09/day=01
   year=2017/month=09/day=02
   year=2017/month=09/day=03
   year=2017/month=09/day=04
   year=2017/month=09/day=05
  </code></pre>
  <p>But this table is having many partitions.</p>
  <p>How do I drop all existing partitions at once? I would like to delete all existing partitions at once? Is that possible?</p>