Is hive to be used in any other way also other than like query browser of SQL server?

[Monica Shiralkar]

Hive is used for ad-hoc analysis.Using  hive we run queries like select * from HiveTable where Column1=100.
Behind the scenes it runs Map reduce and gives result.

This way of querying from console  to the developer appears like running sql queries on queryBrowser of SqlServer to check something .Is hive only to be used like this I.e firing queries to check something.?Is Hive solely to check something using a query?If there are any other ways of using Hive then what are those ?
Thanks