diff --git a/sql/core/src/main/java/org/apache/spark/sql/execution/BufferedRowIterator.java b/sql/core/src/main/java/org/apache/spark/sql/execution/BufferedRowIterator.java
index 730a4ae8d560..74c9c0599271 100644
--- a/sql/core/src/main/java/org/apache/spark/sql/execution/BufferedRowIterator.java
+++ b/sql/core/src/main/java/org/apache/spark/sql/execution/BufferedRowIterator.java
@@ -62,10 +62,14 @@ public long durationMs() {
    */
   public abstract void init(int index, Iterator<InternalRow>[] iters);
 
+  /*
+   * Attributes of the following four methods are public. Thus, they can be also accessed from
+   * methods in inner classes. See SPARK-23598
+   */
   /**
    * Append a row to currentRows.
    */
-  protected void append(InternalRow row) {
+  public void append(InternalRow row) {
     currentRows.add(row);
   }
 
@@ -75,7 +79,7 @@ protected void append(InternalRow row) {
    * If it returns true, the caller should exit the loop that [[InputAdapter]] generates.
    * This interface is mainly used to limit the number of input rows.
    */
-  protected boolean stopEarly() {
+  public boolean stopEarly() {
     return false;
   }
 
@@ -84,14 +88,14 @@ protected boolean stopEarly() {
    *
    * If it returns true, the caller should exit the loop (return from processNext()).
    */
-  protected boolean shouldStop() {
+  public boolean shouldStop() {
     return !currentRows.isEmpty();
   }
 
   /**
    * Increase the peak execution memory for current task.
    */
-  protected void incPeakExecutionMemory(long size) {
+  public void incPeakExecutionMemory(long size) {
     TaskContext.get().taskMetrics().incPeakExecutionMemory(size);
   }
 
diff --git a/sql/core/src/test/scala/org/apache/spark/sql/execution/WholeStageCodegenSuite.scala b/sql/core/src/test/scala/org/apache/spark/sql/execution/WholeStageCodegenSuite.scala
index ef16292a8e75..fac2ac914462 100644
--- a/sql/core/src/test/scala/org/apache/spark/sql/execution/WholeStageCodegenSuite.scala
+++ b/sql/core/src/test/scala/org/apache/spark/sql/execution/WholeStageCodegenSuite.scala
@@ -32,6 +32,8 @@ import org.apache.spark.sql.types.{IntegerType, StringType, StructType}
 
 class WholeStageCodegenSuite extends QueryTest with SharedSQLContext {
 
+  import testImplicits._
+
   test("range/filter should be combined") {
     val df = spark.range(10).filter("id = 1").selectExpr("id + 1")
     val plan = df.queryExecution.executedPlan
@@ -307,4 +309,14 @@ class WholeStageCodegenSuite extends QueryTest with SharedSQLContext {
       // a different query can result in codegen cache miss, that's by design
     }
   }
+
+  test("SPARK-23598: Codegen working for lots of aggregation operations without runtime errors") {
+    withSQLConf(SQLConf.SHUFFLE_PARTITIONS.key -> "1") {
+      var df = Seq((8, "bat"), (15, "mouse"), (5, "horse")).toDF("age", "name")
+      for (i <- 0 until 70) {
+        df = df.groupBy("name").agg(avg("age").alias("age"))
+      }
+      assert(df.limit(1).collect() === Array(Row("bat", 8.0)))
+    }
+  }
 }