Supported File Formats

This section contains information on the fie formats and compression schemes that are supported for input to and output of  Designer Cloud Enterprise Edition. 

Filenames

Forbidden characters in import filenames:

The following list of characters present issues in the listed area of the product. If you encounter issues, the following listings may provide some guidance on where the issue occurred.

• General:

  "/"

• Seb browser: 

  "\"

• Excel filenames:

  "#"

• Spark-based running environment:

  "{", "*", "\"

Native Input File Formats

Designer Cloud Enterprise Edition can read and import directly these file formats:

• CSV

• JSON v1, including nested
  
  

  NOTE: JSON files can be read natively but often require additional work to properly structure into tabular format. Depending on how the Designer Cloud application is configured (v1 or v2), JSON files may require conversion before they are available for use in the application. See "Converted file formats" below.

  
  

  NOTE: Designer Cloud Enterprise Edition requires that JSON files be submitted with one valid JSON object per line. Consistently malformed JSON objects or objects that overlap linebreaks might cause import to fail. See Initial Parsing Steps in the User Guide

• Plain Text
• LOG
• TSV

• Parquet

  NOTE: When working with datasets sourced from Parquet files, lineage information and the $sourcerownumber reference are not supported.

• Avro

• XML

  Tip: XML files can be ingested as unstructured text.

• Google Sheets

  NOTE: Individual users must enable access to their Google Drive. No data other than Google Sheets is read from Google Drive.

  See Import Google Sheets Data.

For more information on data is handled initially, see Initial Parsing Steps in the User Guide.

Converted file formats

Files of the following type are not read into the product in their native format. Instead, these file types are converted using the Conversion Service into a file format that is natively supported, stored in the base storage layer, and then ingested for use in the product.

Converted file formats:

• Excel (XLS/XLSX)

  NOTE: Other Excel-related formats, such as XLSM format, are not supported.

  
  

  Tip: You may import multiple worksheets from a single workbook at one time. See Import Excel Data in the User Guide.

• Google Sheets
  
  

  Tip: You may import multiple sheets from a single Google Sheet at one time. See Import Google Sheets Data in the User Guide.

• PDF

  NOTE: PDF support may need to be enabled in your environment. See Import PDF Data.

  • PDF is supported for import only.
  • See Import PDF Data in the User Guide.

• JSON v2

Notes on JSON:

There are two methods of ingesting JSON files for use in the product. 

• JSON v2 - This newer version reads the JSON source file through the Conversion Service, which stores a restructured version of the data in tabular format on the base storage layer for quick and simple use within the application. 

  Tip: This method is enabled by default and is recommended. For more information, see Working with JSON v2.

• JSON v1 - This older version reads JSON files directly into the platform as text files. However, this method often requires additional work to restructure the data into tabular format. For more information, see Working with JSON v1.

Parsing Limits

After a file is passed into the Designer Cloud application,  a set of transformations is applied to it to prepare it for use in the application. These transformations may impose additional limits on the file that is imported. When these transformations fail, the file may be imported into the application as a single column of data. For more information, see Initial Parsing Steps. 

Native Output File Formats

Designer Cloud Enterprise Edition can write to these file formats:

• CSV
• JSON

• Tableau Hyper

  NOTE: Publication of results in Hyper format may require additional configuration. See below.

• Avro

  NOTE: The Trifacta Photon and Spark running environments apply Snappy compression to this format.

• Parquet

  NOTE: The Trifacta Photon and Spark running environments apply Snappy compression to this format.

Compression Algorithms

When a file is imported, the Designer Cloud application attempts to infer the compression algorithm in use based on the filename extension. For example, .gz files are assumed to be compressed with GZIP. 

Read Native File Formats

Write Native File Formats

Snappy compression formats

Designer Cloud Enterprise Edition supports the following variants of Snappy compression format:

Additional Configuration for File Format Support

Publication of some formats requires execute permissions

When job results are generated and published in the following formats, the Designer Cloud Powered by Trifacta platform includes a JAR, from which is extracted a binary executable into a temporary directory. From this directory, the binary is then executed to generate the results in the proper format. By default, this directory is set to /tmp on the Alteryx node.

In many environments, execute permissions are disabled on /tmp for security reasons. Use the steps below to specify the temporary directory where this binary can be moved and executed.

Steps:

1. Login to the application as an administrator.
2. From the menu, select User menu > Admin console > Admin settings.

3. For each of the following file formats, locate the listed parameter, where the related binary code can be executed:

   File Format	Parameter	Setting to Add
   Snappy	"data-service.jvmOptions"	-Dorg.xerial.snappy.tempdir=<some executable directory>
   Hyper	See previous.	See previous.

4. Save your changes and restart the platform.

5. Run a job configured for direct publication of the modified file format.