1. Problem Description
When running HQL statements in Hive version 1.2.2, the following exception is reported.

Exception in thread “main” java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: org/apache/hadoop/hive/cli/CliDriver : Unsupported major.minor version 51.0
at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass1(Native Method)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClassCond(ClassLoader.java:632)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass(ClassLoader.java:616)
at java.security.SecureClassLoader.defineClass(SecureClassLoader.java:141)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.defineClass(URLClassLoader.java:283)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.access$000(URLClassLoader.java:58)
at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:197)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:190)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:307)
at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launcher.java:301)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:296)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:248)
at java.lang.Class.forName0(Native Method)
at java.lang.Class.forName(Class.java:247)
at org.apache.hadoop.util.RunJar.main(RunJar.java:205)

The current JDK version is relatively low for 1.6.1.

2. Problem Analysis
This is because the dependent Hadoop “jar” is compiled with JDK 1.7, but we run it in JDK 1.6 environment. The main reason is that the JDK version is too low.

The version comparison can be found at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_class_file

Java SE 9 = 53 (0x35 hex)
Java SE 8 = 52 (0x34 hex)
Java SE 7 = 51 (0x33 hex)
Java SE 6.0 = 50 (0x32 hex)
Java SE 5.0 = 49 (0x31 hex)
JDK 1.4 = 48 (0x30 hex)
JDK 1.3 = 47 (0x2F hex)
JDK 1.2 = 46 (0x2E hex)
JDK 1.1 = 45 (0x2D hex)

3. Solution
According to the above analysis to upgrade the JDK version to JDK 1.7 can be.