public List<FieldSchema> getPartCols() {
    List<FieldSchema> partKeys = tTable.getPartitionKeys();
    if (partKeys == null) {
      partKeys = new ArrayList<>();
      tTable.setPartitionKeys(partKeys);
    }
    return partKeys;
  }
Marker SemanticException, so that processing that allows for table validation failures
and appropriately handles them can recover from these types of SemanticExceptions
ql/src/java/org/apache/hadoop/hive/ql/metadata/Table.java