Trying to port some existing PIG scripts that run perfectly locally and on Hortonworks to HDInsights and I am getting a class not found error when trying to read Avro files via Pig's piggybank (piggybank is included in the HDInsight distribution). 

Wonder if anyone else has got Avro to work in HDInsight to work or has a work around (.eg. copy which jar where?)

In more detail ... Tracing this down I ran PIG directly via remote terminal on the Azure HDInsight instance. 

The error I see is: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.json.simple.parser.ParseException

This is I think, the json-simple library at <https://code.google.com/p/json-simple/>

I have tried adding this to a few places in the HDInsight VM (and explicitly registering the library in PIG) and still get the error.

The error is simple to reproduce by RDP into the Hadoop command line prompt on the desktop of an HDinsight Azure instance:

Start PIG with details ...

```
c:\apps\dist\pig-0.11.0.1.3.1.0-06\bin>pig -verbose -warning

```

Enter any line using AvroStorage. E.g. 

```
grunt> LocationRecordAvro = LOAD 'wasb:///testinput/20130901.avro' USING org.apache.pig.
piggybank.storage.avro.AvroStorage();

```

Get an exception ...

```
2013-11-21 16:27:53,732 [main] ERROR org.apache.pig.tools.grunt.Grunt - ERROR 1200: Pig script failed to parse:
<line 1, column 21> pig script failed to validate: java.lang.RuntimeException: could not instantiate 'org.apache.pig.piggybank.storage.avro.AvroStorage' with arguments 'null'
2013-11-21 16:27:53,732 [main] ERROR org.apache.pig.tools.grunt.Grunt - Failed to parse: Pig script failed to parse:
<line 1, column 21> pig script failed to validate: java.lang.RuntimeException: could not instantiate 'org.apache.pig.piggybank.storage.avro.AvroStorage' with arguments 'null'
        at org.apache.pig.parser.QueryParserDriver.parse(QueryParserDriver.java:
191)
        at org.apache.pig.PigServer$Graph.validateQuery(PigServer.java:1571)
        at org.apache.pig.PigServer$Graph.registerQuery(PigServer.java:1544)
        at org.apache.pig.PigServer.registerQuery(PigServer.java:516)
        at org.apache.pig.tools.grunt.GruntParser.processPig(GruntParser.java:99
1)
        at org.apache.pig.tools.pigscript.parser.PigScriptParser.parse(PigScript
Parser.java:412)
        at org.apache.pig.tools.grunt.GruntParser.parseStopOnError(GruntParser.j
ava:194)
        at org.apache.pig.tools.grunt.GruntParser.parseStopOnError(GruntParser.j
ava:170)
        at org.apache.pig.tools.grunt.Grunt.run(Grunt.java:69)
        at org.apache.pig.Main.run(Main.java:538)
        at org.apache.pig.Main.main(Main.java:157)
Caused by:
<line 1, column 21> pig script failed to validate: java.lang.RuntimeException: could not instantiate 'org.apache.pig.piggybank.storage.avro.AvroStorage' with arguments 'null'
        at org.apache.pig.parser.LogicalPlanBuilder.buildLoadOp(LogicalPlanBuild
er.java:835)
        at org.apache.pig.parser.LogicalPlanGenerator.load_clause(LogicalPlanGen
erator.java:3236)
        at org.apache.pig.parser.LogicalPlanGenerator.op_clause(LogicalPlanGener
ator.java:1315)
        at org.apache.pig.parser.LogicalPlanGenerator.general_statement(LogicalP
lanGenerator.java:799)
        at org.apache.pig.parser.LogicalPlanGenerator.statement(LogicalPlanGener
ator.java:517)
        at org.apache.pig.parser.LogicalPlanGenerator.query(LogicalPlanGenerator
.java:392)
        at org.apache.pig.parser.QueryParserDriver.parse(QueryParserDriver.java:
184)
        ... 10 more
Caused by: java.lang.RuntimeException: could not instantiate 'org.apache.pig.piggybank.storage.avro.AvroStorage' with arguments 'null'
        at org.apache.pig.impl.PigContext.instantiateFuncFromSpec(PigContext.jav
a:618)
        at org.apache.pig.parser.LogicalPlanBuilder.buildLoadOp(LogicalPlanBuild
er.java:823)
        ... 16 more
Caused by: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/json/simple/parser/ParseException

        at java.lang.Class.getDeclaredConstructors0(Native Method)
        at java.lang.Class.privateGetDeclaredConstructors(Class.java:2404)
        at java.lang.Class.getConstructor0(Class.java:2714)
        at java.lang.Class.newInstance0(Class.java:343)
        at java.lang.Class.newInstance(Class.java:325)
        at org.apache.pig.impl.PigContext.instantiateFuncFromSpec(PigContext.jav
a:588)
        ... 17 more
Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.json.simple.parser.ParseExcepti
on
        at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:366)
        at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:355)
        at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
        at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:354)
        at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:423)
        at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launcher.java:308)
        at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:356)
        ... 23 more

grunt>

```