Parquet in ArcGIS Pro

There are two ways you can work with Apache Parquet files in ArcGIS Pro. Each serves a different purpose and has different requirements as follows:

• Create a multifile feature connection from multiple Parquet files that have the same schema—Use this option to analyze or visualize multiple files at once. For information and requirements for this method, see Multifile feature connections and its related help pages.
• Access a single Parquet file stored on a local drive or a supported cloud storage location and add it to a map or scene—This method is optimized for visualizing and querying features on a map or scene when the Parquet file contains a GeoParquet format spatial field. This functionality is available with any ArcGIS Pro license level. For requirements and related information for this method, see the information below.

Requirements to use the contents of a single Parquet file

To visualize the spatial data in a Parquet file that is stored on a local drive or in a supported cloud storage location, the file must meet the requirements described below.

File requirements

The following requirements related to the file name and format must be met to use it with ArcGIS Pro:

• The file extension must be .parquet.
• Only unencrypted Parquet files are supported.
• ArcGIS Pro supports uncompressed Parquet files or Parquet files compressed using the Snappy, GZIP, or Zstandard (Zstd) compression format. Other compression formats, including custom compression formats, are not supported.
• The file name must contain alphanumeric characters. Dashes (-) and underscores (_) are also allowed. The following special characters will be replaced with underscores in the cached layer name:
  • Parentheses (())
  • Brackets ([])
  • Curly brackets ({})
  • Ampersand (&)
  • At sign (@)
  • Caret (^)
  • Dot (.)
  • Exclamation mark (!)
  • Hash sign (#)
  • Percent sign (%)
  • Plus sign (+)
  • Single quotation mark (')
  • Tilde (~)
  • U.S. dollar sign ($)

  Other special characters are not supported.

Column requirements

The columns in the Parquet file must meet the following requirements to use with ArcGIS Pro:

• Column names must contain 128 or fewer alphanumeric characters. Underscores (_) are also allowed. Spaces, tabs, line breaks, and the following special characters will be replaced with underscores in the field name in the cached layer:
  • Parentheses (())
  • Brackets ([])
  • Angle brackets (< >)
  • Curly brackets ({})
  • Ampersand (&)
  • Asterisk (*)
  • At sign (@)
  • Caret (^)
  • Colon (:)
  • Dot (.)
  • Equals sign (=)
  • Exclamation mark (!)
  • Hash sign (#)
  • Hyphen (-)
  • Percent sign (%)
  • Pipe (|)
  • Plus sign (+)
  • Semicolon (;)
  • Single quotation mark (')
  • Slash (\ or /)
  • Tilde (~)
  • U.S. dollar sign ($)

  Other special characters are not supported.

• Columns cannot be nested.
• The file must contain a single spatial (GeoParquet format) column. X, Y, and Z fields, latitude-longitude, and elevation fields are not recognized as shape fields at this time; they are read as string or numeric fields.
• The spatial field must be defined in the GeoParquet standard, version 1.0.0 or 1.1.0.
• ArcGIS Pro does not support geometry collection spatial types.

Supported uses in ArcGIS Pro

The following is a summary of how you can use a single Parquet file in ArcGIS Pro at this release. For more information, see FAQs about using a Parquet file in ArcGIS Pro.

• The data from the Parquet file is intended for visualization and querying in ArcGIS Pro. Add the data to a map or scene to view it.
• When you replace or alter the contents of the Parquet file using third-party software, ArcGIS Pro identifies that the file was modified and rebuilds the local persistent cache of the data (if one exists) to incorporate the altered data. See Cached Parquet data for more information.
• You can use the data from the Parquet file as input to a geoprocessing tool. You can add the data from the Parquet file to a map in ArcGIS Pro, and use the map layer in the geoprocessing tool or ArcPy script, or you can add the Parquet file as input to geoprocessing tools or ArcPy functions directly from the folder or cloud storage connection.
• You can publish the following types of web layers that copy all data to ArcGIS Enterprise or ArcGIS Online, resulting in hosted layers:
  • Web feature layers
  • Vector tile layers with an associated web feature layer
  • Scene layers with an associated web feature layer
  • Tables