On Spark 2 and HDP 3.x . Edit file "/usr/hdp/3.1.4.0-315/spark2/conf/hive-site.xml" . Remove property below: "<property> <name>metastore.catalog.default</name> <value>spark</value> </property>" After i show all databases: scala> val sqlContext = new org.apache.spark.sql.hive.HiveContext(sc); warning: there was one deprecation warning; re-run with -deprecation for details sqlContext: org.apache.spark.sql.hive.HiveContext = org.apache.spark.sql.hive.HiveContext@4e6881e scala> sqlContext.sql("show databases").show(); Hive Session ID = edac02b0-c2f7-4cd9-919d-97bff977be3b +------------------+ | databaseName| +------------------+ | default| |information_schema| | sys| | toy_store| | website| +------------------+     ... View more