# Create Amazon Ion tables
<a name="ion-serde-using-create-table"></a>

To create a table in Athena from data stored in Amazon Ion format, you can use one of the following techniques in a CREATE TABLE statement:
+ Specify `STORED AS ION`. In this usage, you do not have to specify the Amazon Ion Hive SerDe explicitly. This choice is the more straightforward option.
+ Specify the Amazon Ion class paths in the `ROW FORMAT SERDE`, `INPUTFORMAT`, and `OUTPUTFORMAT` fields.

You can also use `CREATE TABLE AS SELECT` (CTAS) statements to create Amazon Ion tables in Athena. For information, see [Use CTAS and INSERT INTO to create Amazon Ion tables](ion-serde-using-ctas-and-insert-into-to-create-ion-tables.md).

## Specify STORED AS ION
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The following example `CREATE TABLE` statement uses `STORED AS ION` before the `LOCATION` clause to create a table based on flight data in Amazon Ion format. The `LOCATION` clause specifies the bucket or folder where the input files in Ion format are located. All files in the specified location are scanned.

```
CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE flights_ion (
    yr INT,
    quarter INT,
    month INT,
    dayofmonth INT,
    dayofweek INT,
    flightdate STRING,
    uniquecarrier STRING,
    airlineid INT,
)
STORED AS ION
LOCATION 's3://amzn-s3-demo-bucket/'
```

## Specify the Amazon Ion class paths
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Instead of using the `STORED AS ION` syntax, you can explicitly specify the Ion class path values for the `ROW FORMAT SERDE`, `INPUTFORMAT`, and `OUTPUTFORMAT` clauses as follows.


****  

| Parameter | Ion class path | 
| --- | --- | 
| ROW FORMAT SERDE | 'com.amazon.ionhiveserde.IonHiveSerDe' | 
| STORED AS INPUTFORMAT | 'com.amazon.ionhiveserde.formats.IonInputFormat' | 
| OUTPUTFORMAT | 'com.amazon.ionhiveserde.formats.IonOutputFormat' | 

The following DDL query uses this technique to create the same external table as in the previous example.

```
CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE flights_ion (
    yr INT,
    quarter INT,
    month INT,
    dayofmonth INT,
    dayofweek INT,
    flightdate STRING,
    uniquecarrier STRING,
    airlineid INT,
)
ROW FORMAT SERDE
 'com.amazon.ionhiveserde.IonHiveSerDe'
STORED AS INPUTFORMAT
 'com.amazon.ionhiveserde.formats.IonInputFormat'
OUTPUTFORMAT
 'com.amazon.ionhiveserde.formats.IonOutputFormat'
LOCATION 's3://amzn-s3-demo-bucket/'
```

For information about the SerDe properties for `CREATE TABLE` statements in Athena, see [Amazon Ion SerDe property reference](ion-serde-using-ion-serde-properties.md).