Hive - how to handle missing tables in Hive?

use try and catch for generic ports. The existing table will be at the resulting port

Try some generic SQL operation on your Hive (or Impala) environment. If one fails you could populate a Flow variable with some information (eg. the surviving table)

Another possibility would be to try some combination with the "Active Branch Inverter"
https://hub.knime.com/knime/extensions/org.knime.features.base/latest/org.knime.base.node.flowcontrol.trycatch.inverter.ActiveBranchInverterNodeFactory

External resources

• KNIME Flow Control Guide
• MEDIUM Blog: KNIME, Databases and SQL
• example how to use Try/Catch sequence while writing to Database
• Sending a file via EMail - use of Active Branch Inverter
• School of Hive - with KNIME's local Big Data environment (SQL for Big Data)
• Leveraging Athena with KNIME in a Robust Manner, Part 2