File formats supported for Synapse-External tables with ADLS Gen2

Question

What are all the file formats supported by Azure-Synapse to create an external table? The underlying storage for this external table is ADLS Gen2.

My understanding is, ADLS Gen2 can store various formats of data.
Example.
Avro format
Binary format
Delimited text format
Excel format
JSON format
ORC format
Parquet format
XML format

My question is, is it possible to create an external table in Synapse with all the above file formats?
or
The external tables can only be created for specific file formats (Parquet, Delimited) only?

Answer 1

Hello @Vijay Sampath (Trianz) ,

Thanks for the question and using MS Q&A platform.

CREATE EXTERNAL FILE FORMAT to describe format of CSV(DELIMITEDTEXT) or Parquet files.

For more details, refer to Use external tables with Synapse SQL.

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

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