> NULL::character%20varying) ... > i want to say this is somehow related to a java version (we're using 8) >but i'm not sure.
The "character varying" looks like a lot like a Postgres issue to me (though character varying could be the real term for varchar in another DB). The hive-metastore.log should have the real backtrace. You can try doing set hive.metastore.uris=; set hive.metastore.try.direct.sql=false; (i.e switch to embedded metastore + disable direct sql, in Hive CLI - provided you have all the password stuff for the metastore in the regular hive-site.xml) https://github.com/apache/hive/blob/master/metastore/src/java/org/apache/ha doop/hive/metastore/MetaStoreDirectSql.java#L887 Cheers, Gopal
