When you use the Greenplum tools for loading and unloading data, you must specify how your data is formatted. COPY, CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE,and gpload have clauses that allow you to specify how your data is formatted. Data can be delimited text (TEXT) or comma separated values (CSV) format. External data must be formatted correctly to be read by Greenplum Database. This topic explains the format of data files expected by Greenplum Database.

• Formatting Rows

• Formatting Columns

• Representing NULL Values

• Escaping

• Character Encoding

Parent topic: Loading and Unloading Data