Starting, Stopping, and Using HiveServer2

HiveServer2 is an improved version of HiveServer that supports Kerberos authentication and multi-client concurrency. Cloudera recommends HiveServer2.

To start HiveServer2:

$ sudo service hive-server2 start

To stop HiveServer2:

$ sudo service hive-server2 stop

To confirm that HiveServer2 is working, start the beeline CLI and use it to execute a SHOW TABLES query on the HiveServer2 process:

$ /usr/lib/hive/bin/beeline
beeline> !connect jdbc:hive2://localhost:10000 username password org.apache.hive.jdbc.HiveDriver
0: jdbc:hive2://localhost:10000> SHOW TABLES;
show tables;
+-----------+
| tab_name  |
+-----------+
+-----------+
No rows selected (0.238 seconds)
0: jdbc:hive2://localhost:10000>

Using the Beeline CLI

Beeline is the CLI (command-line interface) developed specifically to interact with HiveServer2. It is based on the SQLLine CLI written by Marc Prud'hommeaux.

Use the following commands to start beeline and connect to a running HiveServer2 process. In this example the HiveServer2 process is running on localhost at port 10000:

$ beeline
beeline> !connect jdbc:hive2://localhost:10000 username password org.apache.hive.jdbc.HiveDriver
0: jdbc:hive2://localhost:10000>
As of CDH 5.2, there are still some Hive CLI features that are not available with Beeline. For example:
  • Beeline does not show query logs like the Hive CLI
  • When adding JARs to HiveServer2 with Beeline, the JARs must be on the HiveServer2 host.

At present the best source for documentation on Beeline is the original SQLLine documentation.