Hive's Data Definition Language (DDL) is a subset of HQL statements that describe the Hive data structure by creating, deleting, or altering schema objects such as databases, tables, views, partitions, and buckets. Most DDL statements start with the CREATE, DROP, or ALTER keywords. The syntax of HQL DDL is very similar to SQL DDL. In the next section, we'll focus on the details of HQL DDL.