A method and system to creating query-level access to an external distributed file system by identifying a location of one or more external data residing on the external distributed file system, creating a query specifying an external table within a database engine having one or more location files, wherein the location files identify metadata operations for accessing and processing the one or more external data, defining metadata operations for accessing and processing the one or more external data, wherein the processing that produces one or more result files occurs at the external distributed file system, and executing the query at the database engine to create the external table, the external table comprising the one or more location files identifying the metadata directives for processing query-level requests on the one or more external data stored on the external distributed file system.