ORC format in Data Factory in Microsoft Fabric

This article outlines how to configure ORC format in the data pipeline of Data Factory in Microsoft Fabric.

Supported capabilities

ORC format is supported for the following activities and connectors as a source and destination.

Category Connector/Activity
Supported connector Amazon S3
Amazon S3 Compatible
Azure Blob Storage
Azure Data Lake Storage Gen1
Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2
Azure Files
File system
FTP
Google Cloud Storage
HTTP
Lakehouse Files
Oracle Cloud Storage
SFTP
Supported activity Copy activity (source/destination)
Lookup activity
GetMetadata activity
Delete data activity

ORC format in copy activity

To configure ORC format, choose your connection in the source or destination of data pipeline copy activity, and then select ORC in the drop-down list of File format. Select Settings for further configuration of this format.

Screenshot showing file format settings.

ORC format as source

After you select Settings in the File format section, the following properties are shown in the pop-up File format settings dialog box.

Screenshot showing ORC file format source.

  • Compression type: Choose the compression codec used to read ORC files in the drop-down list. You can choose from None, zlib or snappy.

ORC format as destination

After you select Settings, the following properties are shown in the pop-up File format settings dialog box.

Screenshot showing ORC file format destination.

  • Compression type: Choose the compression codec used to write ORC files in the drop-down list. You can choose from None, zlib or snappy.

Under Advanced settings in the Destination tab, the following ORC format related properties are displayed.

  • Max rows per file: When writing data into a folder, you can choose to write to multiple files and specify the maximum rows per file. Specify the maximum rows that you want to write per file.
  • File name prefix: Applicable when Max rows per file is configured. Specify the file name prefix when writing data to multiple files, resulted in this pattern: <fileNamePrefix>_00000.<fileExtension>. If not specified, the file name prefix is auto generated. This property doesn't apply when the source is a file based store or a partition option enabled data store.

Table summary

ORC as source

The following properties are supported in the copy activity Source section when using ORC format.

Name Description Value Required JSON script property
File format The file format that you want to use. ORC Yes type (under datasetSettings):
Orc
Compression type The compression codec used to read ORC files. None
zlib
snappy
No orcCompressionCodec:
none
zlib
snappy

ORC as destination

The following properties are supported in the copy activity Destination section when using the ORC format.

Name Description Value Required JSON script property
File format The file format that you want to use. ORC Yes type (under datasetSettings):
Orc
Compression type The compression codec used to write ORC files. None
zlib
snappy
No orcCompressionCodec:
none
zlib
snappy
Max rows per file When writing data into a folder, you can choose to write to multiple files and specify the maximum rows per file. Specify the maximum rows that you want to write per file. <your max rows per file> No maxRowsPerFile
File name prefix Applicable when Max rows per file is configured. Specify the file name prefix when writing data to multiple files, resulted in this pattern: <fileNamePrefix>_00000.<fileExtension>. If not specified, the file name prefix is auto generated. This property doesn't apply when the source is a file based store or a partition option enabled data store. <your file name prefix> No fileNamePrefix