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RCFile stores table data in a flat file consisting of binary key/value pairs. It first partitions rows horizontally into row splits. , and then it vertically partitions each row split in a columnar way. RCFile first stores the metadata of a row split , as the key part of a record, and all the data of a row split as the value part.
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A shell utility is available for reading RCFile data and metadata: see RCFileCat .
For details about the RCFile format, see:
- Javadoc for RCFile.java
- the 2011 ICDE conference paper "RCFile: A Fast and Space-efficient Data Placement Structure in MapReduce-based Warehouse Systems " by Yongqiang He, Rubao Lee, Yin Huai, Zheng Shao, Namit Jain, Xiaodong Zhang, and Zhiwei Xu.
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