Data formats

COPY supports many data formats, detailed in the sections that follow. You specify a data format by specifying a parser.

By default, COPY uses the DELIMITED parser (Delimited data) to load raw data into the database. Raw input data must be in UTF-8, delimited text format. Other parsers support other data formats.

The syntax for specifying which parser to use varies. The description of each parser includes this information.

The same COPY statement cannot mix raw data types that require different parsers, such as NATIVE and FIXEDWIDTH. You can, however, load data of different formats, using different parsers, into the same table using separate COPY statements.

For information about verifying input data formats, see Handling Non-UTF-8 input.

All parsers described in this section can be used with conventional tables (those created with CREATE TABLE or CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE). Some also support Flex tables (CREATE FLEX TABLE). For more information specific to Flex tables, see Using flex table parsers.

All parsers support all primitive data types and several support one-dimensional arrays of primitive types. Some parsers support other complex types. See the documentation of individual parsers for information about supported types.