PolyBase features and limitations
Applies to: 
SQL Server 2016 (13.x) and later versions
Azure SQL Database
Azure Synapse Analytics
Analytics Platform System (PDW)
This article is a summary of PolyBase features available for SQL Server products and services.
Feature summary for product releases
This table lists the key features for PolyBase and the products in which they're available.
| Feature | SQL Server (Beginning with 2016) | Azure SQL Database | Azure Synapse Analytics | Parallel Data Warehouse |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Query Hadoop data with Transact-SQL | Yes | No | No | Yes |
| Import data from Hadoop | Yes | No | No | Yes |
| Export data to Hadoop | Yes | No | No | Yes |
| Query, import from, export to Azure HDInsight | No | No | No | No |
| Push down query computations to Hadoop | Yes | No | No | Yes |
| Import data from Azure Blob storage | Yes | Yes 1 | Yes | Yes |
| Export data to Azure Blob storage | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Import data from Azure Data Lake Store | No | No | Yes | No |
| Export data to Azure Data Lake Store | No | No | Yes | No |
| Run PolyBase queries from Microsoft BI tools | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
1 Introduced in SQL Server 2017 (14.x), see Examples of bulk access to data in Azure Blob Storage.
Known limitations
PolyBase has the following limitations:
Before SQL Server 2019 (15.x), the maximum possible row size, which includes the full length of variable length columns, can't exceed 32 KB in SQL Server or 1 MB in Azure Synapse Analytics. In SQL Server 2019 (15.x) and later versions, this limitation is lifted. The limit remains 1 MB for Hadoop data sources, but is limited only by the maximum SQL Server limit for other data sources.
When data is exported into an ORC file format from SQL Server or Azure Synapse Analytics, text-heavy columns might be limited. They can be limited to as few as 50 columns because of Java out-of-memory error messages. To work around this issue, export only a subset of the columns.
PolyBase can't connect to any Hadoop instance if Knox is enabled.
If you use Hive tables with transactional = true, PolyBase can't access the data in the Hive table's directory.
PolyBase services require SQL Server service to have TCP/IP network protocol enabled to function correctly. Additionally, if TCP/IP Protocol configuration setting Listen All is set to No, the following TCP/IP configurations are required:
- An entry for the correct listener port in either TCP Dynamic Ports or TCP Ports under IPAll. This is required due to the way PolyBase services resolve the listener port of the SQL Server Engine.
- Enable the desired IP address(es) in TCP/IP Properties > IP Addresses; otherwise, SQL Server Engine will not accept any TCP/IP connections and PolyBase services will still fail to connect to SQL Server Engine.
PolyBase on SQL Server on Linux doesn't function if IPv6 is disabled in the kernel. For more information, see SQL Server on Linux: Known issues.
PolyBase services require Shared Memory protocol to be enabled to function properly.
If you have a default SQL Server instance that is configured to listen on TCP port other than 1433, you can't use it as a head node in a PolyBase scale-out group. When you execute
sp_polybase_join_group, if you pass 'MSSQLSERVER' as the instance name, SQL Server assumes port 1433 is the listener port, so the Data Movement service is unable to connect to the head node when starting.Oracle synonyms aren't supported for usage with PolyBase.
UTF-8 collations aren't supported for Hadoop external data sources.
Hadoop is no longer supported in SQL Server 2022 (16.x) and later versions.
PolyBase scale-out groups are not supported with Always On availability groups.
Server name length is bound by 15-character NetBIOS name length limitation. If you change the server name after creating it to be 16 characters or longer, PolyBase Data Movement service won't start.