title: Apache Drill: Get Plain JSON
body: <p>I'm new to Apache Drill and I currently really like the column-based reading of drill where, for example, a line-delimited JSON File is directly read and parsed into its columns. </p>
  
  <pre><code>{a: "a1", b: "b1", c: "c1"} 
  {a: "a2", b: "b2", c: "c2"} 
  
  SELECT * FROM dfs.'testlocation\testfile.json';
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>So you all know that the result of the following JSON Example will be:</p>
  
  <pre><code>a  | b  | c
  -------------
  a1 | b1 | c1
  a2 | b2 | c2
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>While this is fine for most of my usage scenarios, I'm currently wondering it it is also possible to "misuse" Drill for just reading the Plain JSON Objects line per line. </p>
  
  <p>So I would like to issue a query, where the result looks like:</p>
  
  <pre><code>            $EXPR(0)
  ----------------------------
  {a: "a1", b: "b1", c: "c1"} 
  {a: "a2", b: "b2", c: "c2"} 
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This is very similar to the result of the inner parts of "complex" JSON Objects.
  However, is this also possible for the first JSON hierarchy? If yes, how?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks in advance.</p>
  
  <p>André </p>