1) Shutdown your metastore instance. 2) Perform a backup of your Derby metastore database. Probably the easiest way of doing this is to just create a copy of the Derby database "metastore_db" directory. 3) Execute the upgrade script: % ij ij version 10.4 ij> CONNECT 'jdbc:derby:/Users/bob/hive/metastore_db;databaseName=metastore_db'; ij> RUN 'upgrade-0.6.0.derby.sql'; ij> quit; NOTE: You may need to install the Derby 'ij' utility. Look here for installation instructions: http://db.apache.org/derby/docs/10.4/getstart/