Ashish Thapliyal points out some Hive improvements in HDInsight 3.6:
2 Create a new Hive table from scratch or alter Table
Create a new table by, clicking on the ‘+’ icon, which opens the create table wizard. Enter table name, column name and choose a data type from the dropdown. You can pick folloiwng advanced hive settings directly from the UI
Transactional : Turn on transaction support in Hive, by checking this flag. Note that the table must be bucketed and stored using an ACID compliant format (such as ORC).
Location : Hive stores the table data for managed tables in the Hive warehouse directory in HDFS which is configured in hive-site.xml with property hive.metastore.warehouse.dir. The default location is /apps/hive/warehouse. The location can be changed using the Location text field.
File Format : The default file format for CREATE TABLE statement is ORC. choose a format from the file format dropdown.
Row Format : Select a row format such as Field terminator, Lines terminator, and Stored File type.
Table can be altered to add new columns or change the column name or column datatype.
Tables can also be renames and altred
Read on for more improvements, including a graphical plan viewer and improved autocomplete.