diff --git a/sql/hive/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/sql/hive/TestHive.scala b/sql/hive/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/sql/hive/TestHive.scala
index 822864f8ef845a2dd7aea934bc88eec76f023d08..7c1d1133c34252d26521a0f17627a76585c73a7f 100644
--- a/sql/hive/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/sql/hive/TestHive.scala
+++ b/sql/hive/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/sql/hive/TestHive.scala
@@ -68,6 +68,8 @@ class TestHiveContext(sc: SparkContext) extends HiveContext(sc) {
   System.clearProperty("spark.hostPort")
   CommandProcessorFactory.clean(hiveconf)
 
+  hiveconf.set("hive.plan.serialization.format", "javaXML")
+
   lazy val warehousePath = getTempFilePath("sparkHiveWarehouse").getCanonicalPath
   lazy val metastorePath = getTempFilePath("sparkHiveMetastore").getCanonicalPath