Beeswax

The Beeswax application enables you to perform queries on Apache Hive, a data warehousing system designed to work with Hadoop. For information about Hive, see Hive Documentation. You can create Hive databases, tables and partitions, load data, create, run, and manage queries, and download the results in a Microsoft Office Excel worksheet file or a comma-separated values file.

Beeswax and Hive Installation and Configuration

Beeswax is installed and configured as part of Hue. For information about installing and configuring Hue, see the Hue Installation manual.

Beeswax assumes an existing Hive installation. The Hue installation instructions include the configuration necessary for Beeswax to access Hive. You can view the current Hive configuration from the Settings tab in the Beeswax application.

By default, a Beeswax user can see the saved queries for all users - both his/her own queries and those of other Beeswax users. To restrict viewing saved queries to the query owner and Hue administrators, set the share_saved_queries property under the [beeswax] section in the Hue configuration file to false.

Starting Beeswax

Click the Beeswax icon (image) in the navigation bar at the top of the Hue browser page.

Managing Databases, Tables, and Partitions

You can create databases, tables, partitions, and load data by executing Hive data manipulation statements in the Beeswax application.

You can also use the Metastore Manager application to manage the databases, tables, and partitions and load data.

Installing Example Queries and Tables

image Note: You must be a superuser to perform this task.

  1. Click image. The Quick Start Wizard opens.
  2. Click Step 2: Examples.
  3. Click Beeswax (Hive UI).

Query Editor

The Query Editor view lets you create, save, and submit queries in the Hive Query Language (HQL), which is similar to Structured Query Language (SQL). When you submit a query, the Beeswax Server uses Hive to run the queries. You can either wait for the query to complete, or return later to find the queries in the History view. You can also request to receive an email message after the query is completed.

In the box to the left of the Query field, you can select a database, override the default Hive and Hadoop settings, specify file resources and user-defined functions, enable users to enter parameters at run-time, and request email notification when the job is complete. See Advanced Query Settings for details on using these settings.

Creating Queries

  1. In the Query Editor window, type a query or multiple queries separated by a semicolon ";". To be presented with a drop-down of autocomplete options, type CTRL+spacebar when entering a query.
  2. To save your query and advanced settings to use again later, click Save As, enter a name and description, and then click OK. To save changes to an existing query, click Save.
  3. If you want to view the execution plan for the query, click Explain. For more information, see http://wiki.apache.org/hadoop/Hive/LanguageManual/Explain.

Loading Queries into the Query Editor

  1. Do one of the following:

  2. Click a query name. The query is loaded into the Query Editor.

Running Queries

image Note: To run a query, you must be logged in to Hue as a user that also has a Unix user account on the remote server.

  1. To execute a portion of the query, highlight one or more query statements.
  2. Click Execute. The Query Results window appears with the results of your query.
  3. If there are multiple statements in the query, click Next in the Multi-statement query pane to execute the remaining statements.

image Note: Under MR JOBS, you can view any MapReduce jobs that the query generated.

Downloading and Saving Query Results

image Important:

Advanced Query Settings

The pane to the left of the Query Editor lets you specify the following options:

DATABASEThe database containing the table definitions.
SETTINGSOverride the Hive and Hadoop default settings. To configure a new setting:
  1. Click Add.
  2. For Key, enter a Hive or Hadoop configuration variable name.
  3. For Value, enter the value you want to use for the variable. For example, to override the directory where structured Hive query logs are created, you would enter hive.querylog.location for Key, and a path for Value.
To view the default settings, click the Settings tab at the top of the page. For information about Hive configuration variables, see: [http://wiki.apache.org/hadoop/Hive/AdminManual/Configuration](http://wiki.apache.org/hadoop/Hive/AdminManual/Configuration). For information about Hadoop configuration variables, see: [http://hadoop.apache.org/docs/current/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-core/mapred-default.xml](http://hadoop.apache.org/docs/current/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-core/mapred-default.xml).
FILE RESOURCESMake files locally accessible at query execution time available on the Hadoop cluster. Hive uses the Hadoop Distributed Cache to distribute the added files to all machines in the cluster at query execution time.
  1. Click Add to configure a new setting.
  2. From the Type drop-down menu, choose one of the following:
    • jar - Adds the specified resources to the Java classpath.
    • archive - Unarchives the specified resources when distributing them.
    • file - Adds the specified resources to the distributed cache. Typically, this might be a transform script (or similar) to be executed.
    • For Path, enter the path to the file or click ![image](images/browse.png) to browse and select the file.
![image](images/note.jpg) Note: It is not necessary to specify files used in a transform script if the files are available in the same path on all machines in the Hadoop cluster.
USER-DEFINED FUNCTIONSSpecify user-defined functions. Click Add to configure a new setting. Specify the function name in the Name field, and specify the class name for Classname. You *must* specify a JAR file for the user-defined functions in FILE RESOURCES. To include a user-defined function in a query, add a $ (dollar sign) before the function name in the query. For example, if MyTable is a user-defined function name in the query, you would type: SELECT $MyTable
PARAMETERIZATIONIndicate that a dialog box should display to enter parameter values when a query containing the string $parametername is executed. Enabled by default.
EMAIL NOTIFICATIONIndicate that an email message should be sent after a query completes. The email is sent to the email address specified in the logged-in user's profile.

Viewing Query History

You can view the history of queries that you have run previously. Results for these queries are available for one week or until Hue is restarted.

  1. Click History. A list of your saved and unsaved queries displays in the Query History window.
  2. To display the queries for all users, click Show everyone's queries. To display your queries only, click Show my queries.
  3. To display the automatically generated actions performed on a user's behalf, click Show auto actions. To display user queries again, click Show user queries.

Viewing, Editing, Copying, and Deleting Saved Queries

You can view a list of saved queries of all users by clicking My Queries and then selecting either Recent Saved Queries or Recent Run Queries tab to display the respective queries or clicking Saved Queries. You can copy any query, but you can edit, delete, and view the history of only your own queries.

Edit

  1. Click Saved Queries. The Queries window displays.
  2. Check the checkbox next to the query and click Edit. The query displays in the Query Editor window.
  3. Change the query and then click Save. You can also click Save As, enter a new name, and click OK to save a copy of the query.

Copy

  1. Click Saved Queries. The Queries window displays.
  2. Check the checkbox next to the query and click Copy. The query displays in the Query Editor window.
  3. Change the query as necessary and then click Save. You can also click Save As, enter a new name, and click OK to save a copy of the query.

Copy in Query History

  1. Click History. The Query History window displays.
  2. To display the queries for all users, click Show everyone's queries. The queries for all users display in the History window.
  3. Click the query you want to copy. A copy of the query displays in the Query Editor window.
  4. Change the query, if necessary, and then click Save As, enter a new name, and click OK to save the query.

Delete

  1. Click Saved Queries. The Queries window displays.
  2. Check the checkbox next to the query and click Delete.
  3. Click Yes to confirm the deletion.