[IMPALA-5675] Support CHAR/VARCHAR length counted in number of UTF-8 characters, not bytes

• Type: Bug
• Status: In Progress
• Priority: Critical
• Resolution: Unresolved
• Affects Version/s: Impala 2.7.0
• Component/s: Backend
• Environment: Cloudera distro 5.10.1
• Epic Link: UTF-8
• Epic Color: ghx-label-6
• Assignee: Quanlong Huang
• Reporter: Branislav Lukáč
• Created: 18/Jul/17 09:23
• Updated: 12/Jan/21 08:41

Description

We have created external table with the following query:

CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE IF NOT EXISTS SAPNSQ.ZAP_GL_EX_IM_CSV ( GLREQUEST DECIMAL(30), KNUMC STRING, FACCP STRING, FCHAR VARCHAR(20), FCLNT VARCHAR(3), FCUKY STRING, FCURR DOUBLE, FDATS STRING, FDEC DECIMAL(8, 2), FFLTP FLOAT, FINT1 TINYINT, FINT2 SMALLINT, FINT4 BIGINT, FLANG STRING, FPREC DOUBLE, FQUAN DOUBLE, FTIMS STRING, FUNIT STRING, FSSTRING STRING, FCHAR40 VARCHAR(40) ) ROW FORMAT DELIMITED FIELDS TERMINATED BY "\t" STORED AS TEXTFILE LOCATION "hdfs:///user/nsqhdp/H_CDC_IMPQ/ZAP_GL_EX_IM_CSV/63E55F5943E95122E1000000C0A83051"

CSV files are already present on specified location hdfs:///user/nsqhdp/H_CDC_IMPQ/ZAP_GL_EX_IM_CSV/63E55F5943E95122E1000000C0A83051

When we execute Select fchar40 FROM sapnsq.zap_gl_ex_im_csv ORDER BY fchar40 with both Hive and Impala, we get different results:

• Hive (see Hive_query.png)
• Impala (see Impala_query.png)

Seems that Impala engine is truncating strings when they contain non-ASCII characters.
So if a character is encoded with 2 bytes, Impala counts it as 2 chars (instead of 1).
Then the FCHAR40 VARCHAR(40) will actually return less than 40 characters.

Example:
1st row contains 3 special characters: É, Ï and ü
Select with Impala truncates the result by 3 characters.

According to Impala documentation (https://www.cloudera.com/documentation/enterprise/5-7-x/topics/impala_varchar.html), Unicode should be supported:
"All data in CHAR and VARCHAR columns must be in a character encoding that is compatible with UTF-8"

Issue Links

• is related to: IMPALA-2019 Proper UTF-8 support in string functions
• relates to: IMPALA-9662 Add builtin functions for masking UTF-8 strings