Apache Hive supports Hive Query Language (HQL). HQL is built on Hadoop ecosystems. It is a query engine that provides an SQL-like interface that reads input data based on the defined schema, and then transparently transforms queries into MapReduce jobs, connected as a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG). It is based on SQL, but it does not fully follow the SQL standard, SQL-92.

HQL does not support transactions and materialized views, and only supports sub-queries and limited indexing.