reading .parquet column in correct datatype

Question

Hi,
In the source tab of the copy activity, I add a new column to show the date, i.e.
CurrentDate --> utcnow()

Then in the parquet file, when I read it using the openrowset query, I put WITH for the column name, etc...
I put the datatype as datetime but it errors.
If I use varchar(50), the view does not error.
Any suggestions?
Thank you

Answer 1

Hi @arkiboys ,

Thank you for posting query on Microsoft Q&A Platform.

utcnow() function returns current timestamp in string format. Hence your parquet file will be having datatypes as UTF8 for CurrentDate column.

Please check below screenshot of parquet file which shows current_date column type as UTF8.

According to Type mappings for parquet in Synapse Analytics for binary UTF8 supported sql data type is varchar only. Hence in your case when you are using varchar its working fine.
Please check below screenshot for same. Click here to know more about Type mappings for parquet in Synapse Analytics.

Hope this will help. Please let us know if any further queries.

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