diff --git a/core/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/api/python/PythonRDD.scala b/core/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/api/python/PythonRDD.scala
index 32f1100406d74..11ab81f1498ba 100644
--- a/core/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/api/python/PythonRDD.scala
+++ b/core/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/api/python/PythonRDD.scala
@@ -25,6 +25,8 @@ import java.util.{List => JList, ArrayList => JArrayList, Map => JMap, Collectio
 import scala.collection.JavaConversions._
 import scala.reflect.ClassTag
 
+import net.razorvine.pickle.{Pickler, Unpickler}
+
 import org.apache.spark._
 import org.apache.spark.api.java.{JavaSparkContext, JavaPairRDD, JavaRDD}
 import org.apache.spark.broadcast.Broadcast
@@ -206,7 +208,7 @@ private object SpecialLengths {
   val TIMING_DATA = -3
 }
 
-private[spark] object PythonRDD {
+object PythonRDD {
   val UTF8 = Charset.forName("UTF-8")
 
   def readRDDFromFile(sc: JavaSparkContext, filename: String, parallelism: Int):
@@ -284,6 +286,42 @@ private[spark] object PythonRDD {
     file.close()
   }
 
+  def pythonToJava(pyRDD: JavaRDD[Array[Byte]]): JavaRDD[_] = {
+    pyRDD.rdd.mapPartitions { iter =>
+      val unpickle = new Unpickler
+      // TODO: Figure out why flatMap is necessay for pyspark
+      iter.flatMap { row =>
+        unpickle.loads(row) match {
+          case objs: java.util.ArrayList[Any] => objs
+          // Incase the partition doesn't have a collection
+          case obj => Seq(obj)
+        }
+      }
+    }
+  }
+
+  def pythonToJavaMap(pyRDD: JavaRDD[Array[Byte]]): JavaRDD[Map[String, _]] = {
+    pyRDD.rdd.mapPartitions { iter =>
+      val unpickle = new Unpickler
+      // TODO: Figure out why flatMap is necessay for pyspark
+      iter.flatMap { row =>
+        unpickle.loads(row) match {
+          case objs: java.util.ArrayList[JMap[String, _]] => objs.map(_.toMap)
+          // Incase the partition doesn't have a collection
+          case obj: JMap[String, _] => Seq(obj.toMap)
+        }
+      }
+    }
+  }
+
+  def javaToPython(jRDD: JavaRDD[Any]): JavaRDD[Array[Byte]] = {
+    jRDD.rdd.mapPartitions { iter =>
+      val unpickle = new Pickler
+      iter.map { row =>
+        unpickle.dumps(row)
+      }
+    }
+  }
 }
 
 private
diff --git a/project/SparkBuild.scala b/project/SparkBuild.scala
index 843a874fbfdb0..60d34ab2fb0f2 100644
--- a/project/SparkBuild.scala
+++ b/project/SparkBuild.scala
@@ -328,7 +328,8 @@ object SparkBuild extends Build {
         "com.twitter"               %% "chill"            % "0.3.1" excludeAll(excludeAsm),
         "com.twitter"                % "chill-java"       % "0.3.1" excludeAll(excludeAsm),
         "org.tachyonproject"         % "tachyon"          % "0.4.1-thrift" excludeAll(excludeHadoop, excludeCurator, excludeEclipseJetty, excludePowermock),
-        "com.clearspring.analytics"  % "stream"           % "2.5.1"
+        "com.clearspring.analytics"  % "stream"           % "2.5.1",
+        "net.razorvine" % "pyrolite_2.10" % "1.1"
       ),
     libraryDependencies ++= maybeAvro
   )
@@ -506,6 +507,7 @@ object SparkBuild extends Build {
 
   def extraAssemblySettings() = Seq(
     test in assembly := {},
+    assemblyOption in assembly ~= { _.copy(cacheOutput = false) },
     mergeStrategy in assembly := {
       case m if m.toLowerCase.endsWith("manifest.mf") => MergeStrategy.discard
       case m if m.toLowerCase.matches("meta-inf.*\\.sf$") => MergeStrategy.discard
diff --git a/python/pyspark/context.py b/python/pyspark/context.py
index d8667e84fedff..f30ebb9c8e7d9 100644
--- a/python/pyspark/context.py
+++ b/python/pyspark/context.py
@@ -32,7 +32,7 @@
         PairDeserializer
 from pyspark.storagelevel import StorageLevel
 from pyspark import rdd
-from pyspark.rdd import RDD
+from pyspark.rdd import RDD, SchemaRDD
 
 from py4j.java_collections import ListConverter
 
@@ -174,6 +174,9 @@ def _ensure_initialized(cls, instance=None, gateway=None):
                 SparkContext._gateway = gateway or launch_gateway()
                 SparkContext._jvm = SparkContext._gateway.jvm
                 SparkContext._writeToFile = SparkContext._jvm.PythonRDD.writeToFile
+                SparkContext._pythonToJava = SparkContext._jvm.PythonRDD.pythonToJava
+                SparkContext._pythonToJavaMap = SparkContext._jvm.PythonRDD.pythonToJavaMap
+                SparkContext._javaToPython = SparkContext._jvm.PythonRDD.javaToPython
 
             if instance:
                 if SparkContext._active_spark_context and SparkContext._active_spark_context != instance:
@@ -460,6 +463,28 @@ def sparkUser(self):
         """
         return self._jsc.sc().sparkUser()
 
+class SQLContext:
+
+    def __init__(self, sparkContext):
+        self._sc = sparkContext
+        self._jsc = self._sc._jsc
+        self._jvm = self._sc._jvm
+        self._ssql_ctx = self._jvm.SQLContext(self._jsc.sc())
+
+    def sql(self, sqlQuery):
+        return SchemaRDD(self._ssql_ctx.sql(sqlQuery), self)
+
+    def applySchema(self, rdd):
+        if (rdd.__class__ is SchemaRDD):
+            raise Exception("Cannot apply schema to %s" % SchemaRDD.__name__)
+        elif type(rdd.first()) is not dict:
+            raise Exception("Only RDDs with dictionaries can be converted to %s" % SchemaRDD.__name__)
+
+        jrdd = self._sc._pythonToJavaMap(rdd._jrdd)
+        srdd = self._ssql_ctx.applySchema(jrdd.rdd())
+        return SchemaRDD(srdd, self)
+
+
 def _test():
     import atexit
     import doctest
diff --git a/python/pyspark/java_gateway.py b/python/pyspark/java_gateway.py
index 6a16756e0576d..d8dd2a65225e1 100644
--- a/python/pyspark/java_gateway.py
+++ b/python/pyspark/java_gateway.py
@@ -64,5 +64,6 @@ def run(self):
     java_import(gateway.jvm, "org.apache.spark.api.java.*")
     java_import(gateway.jvm, "org.apache.spark.api.python.*")
     java_import(gateway.jvm, "org.apache.spark.mllib.api.python.*")
+    java_import(gateway.jvm, "org.apache.spark.sql.SQLContext")
     java_import(gateway.jvm, "scala.Tuple2")
     return gateway
diff --git a/python/pyspark/rdd.py b/python/pyspark/rdd.py
index fb27863e07f55..e11300212c4b1 100644
--- a/python/pyspark/rdd.py
+++ b/python/pyspark/rdd.py
@@ -1387,6 +1387,42 @@ def _jrdd(self):
     def _is_pipelinable(self):
         return not (self.is_cached or self.is_checkpointed)
 
+class Row(dict):
+
+    def __init__(self, d):
+        d.update(self.__dict__)
+        self.__dict__ = d
+        dict.__init__(self, d)
+
+class SchemaRDD(RDD):
+
+    def __init__(self, jschema_rdd, sql_ctx):
+        self.sql_ctx = sql_ctx
+        self._sc = sql_ctx._sc
+        self._jschema_rdd = jschema_rdd
+
+        self.is_cached = False
+        self.is_checkpointed = False
+        self.ctx = self.sql_ctx._sc
+        self._jrdd_deserializer = self.ctx.serializer
+
+    @property
+    def _jrdd(self):
+        return self.toPython()._jrdd
+
+    @property
+    def _id(self):
+        return self._jrdd.id()
+
+    def registerAsTable(self, name):
+        self._jschema_rdd.registerAsTable(name)
+
+    def toPython(self):
+        jrdd = self._jschema_rdd.javaToPython()
+        # TODO: This is inefficient, we should construct the Python Row object
+        # in Java land in the javaToPython function. May require a custom
+        # pickle serializer in Pyrolite
+        return RDD(jrdd, self._sc, self._sc.serializer).map(lambda d: Row(d))
 
 def _test():
     import doctest
diff --git a/sql/core/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/sql/SQLContext.scala b/sql/core/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/sql/SQLContext.scala
index 36059c6630aa4..ef23cf1739246 100644
--- a/sql/core/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/sql/SQLContext.scala
+++ b/sql/core/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/sql/SQLContext.scala
@@ -25,11 +25,13 @@ import org.apache.spark.rdd.RDD
 import org.apache.spark.sql.catalyst.analysis._
 import org.apache.spark.sql.catalyst.dsl
 import org.apache.spark.sql.catalyst.expressions._
+import org.apache.spark.sql.catalyst.types._
 import org.apache.spark.sql.catalyst.optimizer.Optimizer
 import org.apache.spark.sql.catalyst.plans.logical.{Subquery, LogicalPlan}
 import org.apache.spark.sql.catalyst.rules.RuleExecutor
 import org.apache.spark.sql.columnar.InMemoryColumnarTableScan
 import org.apache.spark.sql.execution._
+import org.apache.spark.api.java.JavaRDD
 
 /**
  * <span class="badge" style="float: right; background-color: darkblue;">ALPHA COMPONENT</span>
@@ -238,4 +240,29 @@ class SQLContext(@transient val sparkContext: SparkContext)
      */
     def debugExec() = DebugQuery(executedPlan).execute().collect()
   }
+
+  def applySchema(rdd: RDD[Map[String, _]]): SchemaRDD = {
+    val schema = rdd.first.map { case (fieldName, obj) =>
+      val dataType = obj.getClass match {
+        case c: Class[_] if c == classOf[java.lang.String] => StringType
+        case c: Class[_] if c == classOf[java.lang.Integer] => IntegerType
+       // case c: Class[_] if c == java.lang.Short.TYPE => ShortType
+       // case c: Class[_] if c == java.lang.Integer.TYPE => IntegerType
+       // case c: Class[_] if c == java.lang.Long.TYPE => LongType
+       // case c: Class[_] if c == java.lang.Double.TYPE => DoubleType
+       // case c: Class[_] if c == java.lang.Byte.TYPE => ByteType
+       // case c: Class[_] if c == java.lang.Float.TYPE => FloatType
+       // case c: Class[_] if c == java.lang.Boolean.TYPE => BooleanType
+      }
+      AttributeReference(fieldName, dataType, true)()
+    }.toSeq
+
+    val rowRdd = rdd.mapPartitions { iter =>
+      iter.map { map =>
+        new GenericRow(map.values.toArray.asInstanceOf[Array[Any]]): Row
+      }
+    }
+    new SchemaRDD(this, SparkLogicalPlan(ExistingRdd(schema, rowRdd)))
+  }
+
 }
diff --git a/sql/core/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/sql/SchemaRDD.scala b/sql/core/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/sql/SchemaRDD.scala
index fc95781448569..5dec32ef418df 100644
--- a/sql/core/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/sql/SchemaRDD.scala
+++ b/sql/core/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/sql/SchemaRDD.scala
@@ -17,6 +17,8 @@
 
 package org.apache.spark.sql
 
+import net.razorvine.pickle.{Pickler, Unpickler}
+
 import org.apache.spark.{Dependency, OneToOneDependency, Partition, TaskContext}
 import org.apache.spark.rdd.RDD
 import org.apache.spark.sql.catalyst.analysis._
@@ -24,6 +26,8 @@ import org.apache.spark.sql.catalyst.expressions._
 import org.apache.spark.sql.catalyst.plans.logical._
 import org.apache.spark.sql.catalyst.plans.{Inner, JoinType}
 import org.apache.spark.sql.catalyst.types.BooleanType
+import org.apache.spark.api.java.JavaRDD
+import java.util.{Map => JMap}
 
 /**
  * <span class="badge" style="float: right; background-color: darkblue;">ALPHA COMPONENT</span>
@@ -307,4 +311,20 @@ class SchemaRDD(
 
   /** FOR INTERNAL USE ONLY */
   def analyze = sqlContext.analyzer(logicalPlan)
+
+  def javaToPython: JavaRDD[Array[Byte]] = {
+    val fieldNames: Seq[String] = this.queryExecution.analyzed.output.map(_.name)
+    this.mapPartitions { iter =>
+      val pickle = new Pickler
+      iter.map { row =>
+        val map: JMap[String, Any] = new java.util.HashMap
+        val arr: java.util.ArrayList[Any] = new java.util.ArrayList
+        row.zip(fieldNames).foreach { case (obj, name) =>
+          map.put(name, obj)
+        }
+        arr.add(map)
+        pickle.dumps(arr)
+      }
+    }
+  }
 }
diff --git a/sql/core/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/sql/api/java/JavaSQLContext.scala b/sql/core/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/sql/api/java/JavaSQLContext.scala
index 573345e42c43c..4ca4505fbfc5a 100644
--- a/sql/core/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/sql/api/java/JavaSQLContext.scala
+++ b/sql/core/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/sql/api/java/JavaSQLContext.scala
@@ -18,6 +18,7 @@
 package org.apache.spark.sql.api.java
 
 import java.beans.{Introspector, PropertyDescriptor}
+import java.util.{Map => JMap}
 
 import org.apache.spark.api.java.{JavaRDD, JavaSparkContext}
 import org.apache.spark.sql.SQLContext
@@ -82,7 +83,6 @@ class JavaSQLContext(sparkContext: JavaSparkContext) {
     new JavaSchemaRDD(sqlContext, SparkLogicalPlan(ExistingRdd(schema, rowRdd)))
   }
 
-
   /**
    * Loads a parquet file, returning the result as a [[JavaSchemaRDD]].
    */