Online Documentation for SQL Manager for SQL server

External File Formats

An external file format is the object defining external data stored in Hadoop, Azure Blob Storage, or Azure Data Lake Store. Creating an external file format is a prerequisite for creating an External Table. It stores the actual layout of the data referenced by an external table.

To open an external file format double-click it in the DB Explorer tree.

• Creating/editing external file format
• Browsing object dependencies
• Viewing DDL definition