What is Apache Hive?

Apache Hive is a fault-tolerant data warehouse system built on the Hadoop framework, designed to facilitate large-scale analytics by abstracting the complexity of MapReduce with an SQL-like interface called HiveQL. This interface simplifies data querying for analysts familiar with SQL, allowing them to interact with Hadoop data lakes without needing to understand the intricacies of MapReduce. The Hive architecture comprises a metastore for metadata management, table and file formats that support partitioning and bucketing, and a runtime that translates HiveQL into executable MapReduce code. Despite its popularity for batch processes and ETL pipelines, Hive faces challenges such as complexity and slower query speeds compared to modern technologies like Apache Spark and Trino. Trino, a massively parallel SQL query engine, offers a more efficient alternative by providing faster query turnaround and the ability to perform federated queries across multiple data sources, integrating with the Hadoop ecosystem while enhancing performance and accessibility through Starburst's platform.