Apache Hive is a data warehouse system built on Hadoop that is used for analyzing structured and semi-structured data. It provides a mechanism to project structure onto data and allows users to perform SQL-like queries. Internally, these queries are converted to MapReduce jobs by the Hive compiler. Hive adds extensions to provide better performance in Hadoop and allows integration with custom programs. Hive uses databases and tables to organize data, with tables containing data and metadata describing the data layout. Tables can be managed or external, and data is queried using HiveQL, the Hive query language.