An Apache file format that stores rows: a JSON header describes the layout, followed by record blocks held as binary. It compresses well, cutting storage needs and bandwidth.
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Terms in this definition
- LAMP
Short for Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP (Perl and Python also fill the P): a widely used open-source stack for web applications whose database is frequently Azure Database for MySQL.
- FORMAT
A DAX function that turns a value into text according to a format string, for instance "MMMM" to show a month's name. Since the output is text, numeric operations can't use it, and dynamic format strings were introduced to get around that.
- JSON
Text-based format for structured data. ARM templates and Cosmos DB documents are written in it, and most Azure REST APIs exchange request and response bodies as application/json.
- General-purpose v1
The older storage account kind (
Storage), which lacks access tiers, Archive and premium file shares and retires on 13 October 2026. Converting to ZRS requires first upgrading to GPv2, a one-way change.
Related terms
- Event Hubs Capture
Automatically saves Event Hubs data as Avro files in ADLS Gen2 or Blob Storage, cutting a file whenever a size or time window is reached.
- read_files
A SQL table-valued function that loads files in formats such as CSV, JSON, XML, Parquet, Avro, ORC, text or binary and infers their schema to return rows. Used with the
STREAMkeyword inside a streaming table, it relies on Auto Loader.