Feature Support: Data Loading and Unloading

This document outlines the features of various data loading and unloading methods supported by StarRocks.

File format

Loading file formats

	Data Source	File Format
		CSV	JSON [3]	Parquet	ORC	Avro	ProtoBuf	Thrift
Stream Load	Local file systems, applications, connectors	Yes	Yes	To be supported	To be supported	To be supported
INSERT from FILES	HDFS, S3, OSS, Azure, GCS, NFS(NAS) [5]	Yes (v3.3+)	To be supported	Yes (v3.1+)	Yes (v3.1+)	Yes (v3.4.4+)	To be supported
Broker Load		Yes	Yes (v3.2.3+)	Yes	Yes	To be supported
Routine Load	Kafka	Yes	Yes	To be supported	To be supported	Yes (v3.0+) [1]	To be supported	To be supported
Spark Load		Yes	To be supported	Yes	Yes	To be supported
Connectors	Flink, Spark	Yes	Yes	To be supported	To be supported	To be supported
Kafka Connector [2]	Kafka	Yes (v3.0+)		To be supported	To be supported	Yes (v3.0+)		To be supported
PIPE [4]	Consistent with INSERT from FILES

note

[1], [2]: Schema Registry is required.

[3]: JSON supports a variety of CDC formats. For details about the JSON CDC formats supported by StarRocks, see JSON CDC format.

[4]: Currently, only INSERT from FILES is supported for loading with PIPE.

[5]: You need to mount a NAS device as NFS under the same directory of each BE or CN node to access the files in NFS via the file:// protocol.

JSON CDC formats

	Stream Load	Routine Load	Broker Load	INSERT from FILES	Kafka Connector [1]
Debezium	To be supported	To be supported	To be supported	To be supported	Yes (v3.0+)
Canal	To be supported
Maxwell

note

[1]: You must configure the transforms parameter while loading Debezium CDC format data into Primary Key tables in StarRocks.

Unloading file formats

	Target		File format
	Table format	Remote storage	CSV	JSON	Parquet	ORC
INSERT INTO FILES	N/A	HDFS, S3, OSS, Azure, GCS, NFS(NAS) [3]	Yes (v3.3+)	To be supported	Yes (v3.2+)	Yes (v3.3+)
INSERT INTO Catalog	Hive	HDFS, S3, OSS, Azure, GCS	Yes (v3.3+)	To be supported	Yes (v3.2+)	Yes (v3.3+)
	Iceberg	HDFS, S3, OSS, Azure, GCS	To be supported	To be supported	Yes (v3.2+)	To be supported
	Hudi/Delta		To be supported
EXPORT	N/A	HDFS, S3, OSS, Azure, GCS	Yes [1]	To be supported	To be supported	To be supported
PIPE	To be supported [2]

note

[1]: Configuring Broker process is supported.

[2]: Currently, unloading data using PIPE is not supported.

[3]: You need to mount a NAS device as NFS under the same directory of each BE or CN node to access the files in NFS via the file:// protocol.

File format-related parameters

Loading file format-related parameters

File format	Parameter	Loading method
		Stream Load	INSERT from FILES	Broker Load	Routine Load	Spark Load
CSV	column_separator	Yes	Yes (v3.3+)	Yes [1]
	row_delimiter	Yes		Yes [2] (v3.1+)	Yes [3] (v2.2+)	To be supported
	enclose	Yes (v3.0+)		Yes (v3.0+)	Yes (v3.0+)	To be supported
	escape
	skip_header				To be supported
	trim_space				Yes (v3.0+)
JSON	jsonpaths	Yes	To be supported	Yes (v3.2.3+)	Yes	To be supported
	strip_outer_array
	json_root
	ignore_json_size				To be supported

note

[1]: The corresponding parameter is COLUMNS TERMINATED BY.

[2]: The corresponding parameter is ROWS TERMINATED BY.

[3]: The corresponding parameter is ROWS TERMINATED BY.

Unloading file format-related parameters

File format	Parameter	Unloading method
		INSERT INTO FILES	EXPORT
CSV	column_separator	Yes (v3.3+)	Yes
	line_delimiter [1]
	enclose	Yes	No
	escape	Yes	No
	include_header	Yes	No

note

[1]: The corresponding parameter in data loading is row_delimiter.

Compression formats

Loading compression formats

File format	Compression format	Loading method
		Stream Load	Broker Load	INSERT from FILES	Routine Load	Spark Load
CSV	deflate bzip2 gzip lz4_frame zstd	Yes [1]	Yes [2]	To be supported	To be supported	To be supported
JSON		Yes (v3.2.7+) [3]	To be supported	N/A	To be supported	N/A
Parquet	gzip lz4 snappy zlib zstd	N/A	Yes [4]		To be supported	Yes [4]
ORC

note

[1]: Currently, only when loading CSV files with Stream Load can you specify the compression format by using format=gzip, indicating gzip-compressed CSV files. deflate and bzip2 formats are also supported.

[2]: Broker Load does not support specifying the compression format of CSV files by using the parameter format. Broker Load identifies the compression format by using the suffix of the file. The suffix of gzip-compressed files is .gz, and that of the zstd-compressed files is .zst. Besides, other format-related parameters, such as trim_space and enclose, are also not supported.

[3]: Supports specifying the compression format by using compression = gzip.

[4]: Supported by Arrow Library. You do not need to configure the compression parameter.

Unloading compression formats

File format	Compression format	Unloading method
		INSERT INTO FILES	INSERT INTO Catalog			EXPORT
			Hive	Iceberg	Hudi/Delta
CSV	deflate bzip2 gzip lz4_frame zstd	To be supported	To be supported	To be supported	To be supported	To be supported
JSON	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Parquet	gzip lz4 snappy zstd	Yes (v3.2+)	Yes (v3.2+)	Yes (v3.2+)	To be supported	N/A
ORC

Credentials

Loading - Authentication

Authentication	Loading method
	Stream Load	INSERT from FILES	Broker Load	Routine Load	External Catalog
Single Kerberos	N/A	Yes (v3.1+)	Yes [1] (versions earlier than v2.5)	Yes [2] (v3.1.4+)	Yes
Kerberos Ticket Granting Ticket (TGT)	N/A	To be supported			Yes (v3.1.10+/v3.2.1+)
Single KDC Multiple Kerberos	N/A
Basic access authentications (Access Key pair, IAM Role)	N/A	Yes (HDFS and S3-compatible object storage)		Yes [3]	Yes

note

[1]: For HDFS, StarRocks supports both simple authentication and Kerberos authentication.

[2]: When the security protocol is set to sasl_plaintext or sasl_ssl, both SASL and GSSAPI (Kerberos) authentications are supported.

[3]: When the security protocol is set to sasl_plaintext or sasl_ssl, both SASL and PLAIN authentications are supported.

Unloading - Authentication

	INSERT INTO FILES	EXPORT
Single Kerberos	To be supported	To be supported

Loading - Other parameters and features

Parameter and feature	Loading method
	Stream Load	INSERT from FILES	INSERT from SELECT/VALUES	Broker Load	PIPE	Routine Load	Spark Load
partial_update	Yes (v3.0+)	Yes [1] (v3.3+)		Yes (v3.0+)	N/A	Yes (v3.0+)	To be supported
partial_update_mode	Yes (v3.1+)	To be supported		Yes (v3.1+)	N/A	To be supported	To be supported
COLUMNS FROM PATH	N/A	Yes (v3.2+)	N/A	Yes	N/A	N/A	Yes
timezone or session variable time_zone [2]	Yes [3]	Yes [4]	Yes [4]	Yes [4]	To be supported	Yes [4]	To be supported
Time accuracy - Microsecond	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes (v3.1.11+/v3.2.6+)	To be supported	Yes	Yes

note

[1]: From v3.3 onwards, StarRocks supports Partial Updates in Row mode for INSERT INTO by specifying the column list.

[2]: Setting the time zone by the parameter or the session variable will affect the results returned by functions such as strftime(), alignment_timestamp(), and from_unixtime().

[3]: Only the parameter timezone is supported.

[4]: Only the session variable time_zone is supported.

Unloading - Other parameters and features

Parameter and feature	INSERT INTO FILES	EXPORT
target_max_file_size	Yes (v3.2+)	To be supported
single
Partitioned_by
Session variable time_zone	To be supported
Time accuracy - Microsecond	To be supported	To be supported