Language capabilities

Hive's SQL provides the following basic SQL operations that can work on tables or partitions:

• Filter rows from a table with the help of a WHERE clause
• Select certain columns from the table using a SELECT clause
• Perform equijoins between two tables
• Evaluate aggregations on multiple group by columns for the data stored in a table
• Store the results of a query into another table
• Download the contents of a table to a local (for example, nfs) directory
• Store the results of a query in a hadoop dfs directory
• Manage tables and partitions (create, drop, and alter)
• Plug in custom scripts in the language of choice for custom map/reduce jobs