What causes "Invalid null value in analyze partitions property" in prestodb/presto?

Replace the NULL property value with a valid literal, e.g. partitions = ARRAY['2024-01-01'].

prestodb/presto · warning · PrestoException

INVALID_ANALYZE_PROPERTY

INVALID_ANALYZE_PROPERTY

Error message

Invalid null value in analyze partitions property

What it means

HiveAnalyzeProperties.throwIfNull rejects a null value supplied for a property in ANALYZE TABLE ... PROPERTIES(...). ANALYZE properties (e.g. the partitions list) map property values through parsing functions that must not produce null; a null means the user passed an invalid literal (e.g. NULL) for a property expecting a concrete value.

Source

Thrown at presto-hive/src/main/java/com/facebook/presto/hive/HiveAnalyzeProperties.java:85

    private static List<List<String>> decodePartitionLists(Object object)
    {
        if (object == null) {
            return null;
        }

        // replace null partition value with hive default partition
        return ImmutableList.copyOf(((Collection<?>) object).stream()
                .peek(HiveAnalyzeProperties::throwIfNull)
                .map(partition -> ((Collection<?>) partition).stream()
                        .map(name -> firstNonNull((String) name, HIVE_DEFAULT_DYNAMIC_PARTITION))
                        .collect(toImmutableList()))
                .collect(toImmutableSet()));
    }

    private static void throwIfNull(Object object)
    {
        if (object == null) {
            throw new PrestoException(INVALID_ANALYZE_PROPERTY, "Invalid null value in analyze partitions property");
        }
    }
}

View on GitHub (pinned to 55bb57d202)

Solutions

Replace the NULL property value with a valid literal, e.g. partitions = ARRAY['2024-01-01'].
If the value comes from a variable or template, guard for null and either skip the property or substitute a correct partition list.
To analyze all partitions, omit the partitions property entirely rather than passing null.

Example fix

// before
ANALYZE TABLE orders WITH (partitions = NULL);
// after
ANALYZE TABLE orders WITH (partitions = ARRAY['2024-01-01', '2024-01-02']);

Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

// validate analyze properties before issuing the statement
if (partitionsProp == null) {
    throw new IllegalArgumentException("partitions property must be a non-null array literal; omit it to analyze all partitions");
}

Try / catch

try {
    session.execute(analyzeSql);
} catch (PrestoException e) {
    if (INVALID_ANALYZE_PROPERTY.toErrorCode().equals(e.getErrorCode())) {
        throw new IllegalArgumentException("Fix ANALYZE properties: " + e.getMessage());
    }
    throw e;
}

Prevention

Never template NULL into ANALYZE properties; omit optional properties instead.
Use non-null partition value arrays when generating ANALYZE programmatically.
Add pre-execution SQL linting for ANALYZE statements.

When it happens

Trigger: Running ANALYZE TABLE ... WITH (partitions = ...) (or another analyze property) where the supplied value is SQL NULL or parses to null — throwIfNull fires with INVALID_ANALYZE_PROPERTY.

Common situations: Hand-written ANALYZE statements that pass NULL instead of an array of partition values; programmatically generated ANALYZE queries where the partition list variable is null/unset; scripts templating properties with missing values.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of prestodb/presto@55bb57d202 (2026-09-04). Data as JSON: /api/errors/758c5e0bbddce04b. Report an issue: GitHub.