title: Is there a way to load CSV data into a "binary" Hive format?
body: <p>I am wondering if there is any way to actually load CSV data into a binary Hive format - i.e. doing the same as data loading in a relational database would do: parsing and type converting the input and storing it in a binary format (in another binary file in case of Hive). The Hive reference says that the <code>load data inpath</code> command does not do "any transformation" so I suspect that types are not converted, e.g., from string to integer. I was reading about the OCR and RCFile formats but I was not able to find out if, e.g., string values from the CSV are type converted into machine integer values and stored in HDFS. Is that the case? What other possibilities are there to create binary representations of CSV files in Hive?</p>
  
  <p>On a related note: I suspect Hive does convert string values into machine representations during query processing and is not, e.g., comparing string values - is this assumption right?</p>