[HIVE-10437] NullPointerException on queries where map/reduce is not involved on tables with partitions

• Type: Bug
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Critical
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 1.1.0
• Fix Version/s: 1.2.0
• Component/s: Serializers/Deserializers
• Assignee: Ashutosh Chauhan
• Reporter: Demeter Sztanko
• Created: 22/Apr/15 14:17
• Updated: 18/May/15 19:54
• Resolved: 29/Apr/15 23:35

Description

On a table with partitions, whenever I try to do a simple query which tells hive not to execute mapreduce but just read data straight from hdfs, it raises an exception:

create external table jsonbug(
a int,
b string
)
    PARTITIONED BY (
    `c` string)
ROW FORMAT SERDE
  'org.openx.data.jsonserde.JsonSerDe'
WITH SERDEPROPERTIES (
      'ignore.malformed.json'='true')
STORED AS INPUTFORMAT
  'org.apache.hadoop.mapred.TextInputFormat'
OUTPUTFORMAT
  'org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.io.HiveIgnoreKeyTextOutputFormat'
LOCATION
  '/tmp/jsonbug';

ALTER TABLE jsonbug ADD PARTITION(c='1');

Runnin simple

select * from jsonbug;

Raises the following exception:

FAILED: RuntimeException org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.metadata.HiveException: Failed with exception nulljava.lang.NullPointerException
    at org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.exec.FetchOperator.needConversion(FetchOperator.java:607)
    at org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.exec.FetchOperator.setupOutputObjectInspector(FetchOperator.java:578)
    at org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.exec.FetchOperator.initialize(FetchOperator.java:172)
    at org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.exec.FetchOperator.<init>(FetchOperator.java:140)
    at org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.exec.FetchTask.initialize(FetchTask.java:79)
    at org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.Driver.compile(Driver.java:455)
    at org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.Driver.compile(Driver.java:307)
    at org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.Driver.compileInternal(Driver.java:1112)
    at org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.Driver.runInternal(Driver.java:1160)
    at org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.Driver.run(Driver.java:1049)
    at org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.Driver.run(Driver.java:1039)
    at org.apache.hadoop.hive.cli.CliDriver.processLocalCmd(CliDriver.java:207)
    at org.apache.hadoop.hive.cli.CliDriver.processCmd(CliDriver.java:159)
    at org.apache.hadoop.hive.cli.CliDriver.processLine(CliDriver.java:370)
    at org.apache.hadoop.hive.cli.CliDriver.executeDriver(CliDriver.java:754)
    at org.apache.hadoop.hive.cli.CliDriver.run(CliDriver.java:675)
    at org.apache.hadoop.hive.cli.CliDriver.main(CliDriver.java:615)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:57)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:606)
    at org.apache.hadoop.util.RunJar.main(RunJar.java:160)

It works fine if I execute a query involving map/reduce job though.

This problem occurs only when using SerDe's created for hive versions pre 1.1.0, those which do not have @SerDeSpec annotation specified. Most of the third party SerDE's, including hcat's JsonSerde have this problem as well.
It seems like changes made in HIVE-7977 introduce this bug. See org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.exec.FetchOperator.needConversion(FetchOperator.java:607)

Class<?> tableSerDe = tableDesc.getDeserializerClass();
String[] schemaProps = AnnotationUtils.getAnnotation(tableSerDe, SerDeSpec.class).schemaProps();

And it also seems like a relatively easy fix.