gpfdist:// Protocol

The gpfdist utility serves external data files from a directory on a file host to all Greenplum Database segments in parallel.

gpfdist is located in the $GPHOME/bin directory on your Greenplum Database master host and on each segment host.

Note: Compression is not supported for readable and writeable external tables when the gpfdist utility runs on Windows platforms.

All primary segments access the external file(s) in parallel, subject to the number of segments set in the server configuration parameter. Use multiple gpfdist data sources in a CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE statement to scale the external table’s scan performance.

For more information about configuring gpfdist, see .

See the gpfdist reference documentation for more information about using gpfdist with external tables.