Does impala support 'binary' data type ?

[#1]

Hi ,

I am new to imapala ,my hive table is having one binary type column ( in which I stored an image ).When I tryto query that table in impala  I am getting the following error " ERROR: AnalysisException: Unsupported type 'BINARY' in 'photo_col'."  But the same query is working in Hive .What mistake I am doing please let me know .

I thought that

 * there is no BINARY data type in impala unlike hive.

If I am correct , then how to query the hive table's binary column in impala ?

Thanks in Advance...

[#2]

As you're correctly pointed out Impala currently does not support the BINARY data type, so querying a tablw with that type does not work in Impala.

An idea: You could try altering the column type from BINARY to STRING, and try querying the table with Impala. But beware, I hav enot tried this myself, so no guarantees it will work.

[#3]

It has been a long time since this question was answered.

Has there been further recommendation by Cloudera on this ? Does cloudera support STRING data type to be used to store BINARY data ? or its something that works today and may stop working tomorrow ?