Configuring the compaction check interval

You need to know when and how to control the compaction process checking, performed in the background, of the file system for changes that require compaction.

When you turn on the compaction initiator, consider setting the hive.compactor.check.interval property. This property determines how often the initiator should search for possible tables, partitions, or compaction. Decreasing hive.compactor.check.interval has the following effect:

Reduces the time it takes for compaction to be started for a table or partition that requires compaction.
Requires several calls to the file system for each table or partition that has undergone a transaction since the last major compaction, resulting in increases to the load on the filesystem.

The compaction initiator first checks the completed transactions (COMPLETED_TXN_COMPONENTS), excluding those that already have completed compactions, searching for potential compaction targets. The search of the first iteration includes all transactions. Further searching of iterations are limited to the time-frame since the last iteration.

To configure the compaction check interval, set the hive.compactor.check.interval. For example:

ALTER TABLE mydb.mytable 
SET TBLPROPERTIES ('hive.compactor.check.interval' = '300s');