Parser Types for Reading

You can read a variety of data types from any of the defined reading locations. For example, you can parse JSON files from the file system, network sockets, AMQP, Kafka, Amazon Kinesis, HTTP, or WebSockets.

Files are parsed into rows in a stream or table. Column names are used to derive the format of all column set types in the Extensible Common Data Adapter. Data formats are always derived from column names. You always declare columns in the foreign stream and those columns are always available to queries.

If you do not have information about the file format to be read, or need help filling in foreign stream or agent properties for a file format, you can use the Discovery parser to determine information about a file’s format. This parser reads a sample of the file and returns information on file format options. Currently, the Discovery parser works for CSV, XML, JSON, and Avro files.

You can use the None Parser to pull in a single column of data.

Currently supported file types are:

You can also input data in larger chunks and parse it later using the Parser UDX. This UDX calls the parsers listed above in a function. For more information on using functions, see the topic Transforming Data in s-Server in this guide.