Q:

Does hive need exact schema in Hive Export/Import? 

I am using HDP 2.3

Hadoop version -   2.7.1
Hive version     -    1.2.1

I created a table dev101 in hive using  
create table dev101 (col1 int, col2 char(10));

I inserted two records using
insert into dev101 values (1, 'value1');
insert into dev101 values (2, 'value2');

I exported data to HDFS using 
export table dev101 to '/tmp/dev101';

Then, I created a new table dev102 using
create table dev102 (col1 int, col2 String);

I imported data from /tmp/dev10 in dev102 using
import table dev102 from '/tmp/dev101';

I got error:

FAILED: SemanticException [Error 10120]: The existing table is not compatible with the import spec.    Column Schema does not match

Then I created another table dev103 using
create table dev103 (col1 int, col2 char(50));

Again imported:
import table dev103 from '/tmp/dev101';

Same error:

FAILED: SemanticException [Error 10120]: The existing table is not compatible with the import spec.    Column Schema does not match

Finally, I create table with exactly same schema 
create table dev104 (col1 int, col2 char(10));

And imported
import table dev104 from '/tmp/dev101';

Imported Successfully. 
Does hive need exact schema in Hive Export/Import?  

A:

On Hive Export, it create _metadata and data directories where it keeps metadata and data respectively.  
On Hive Import, you need new table (not present in hive) or blank table with exact same metadata.