Specifies whether the Partition, Offset, and Timestamp columns are exposed.

Data Type

bool

Default Value

true

Remarks

Apache Kafka messages include three pieces of metadata along with every message. These are the timestamp when the message was produced, what partition it was produced to, and the message's offset within that partition. The driver exposes these as the Timestamp, Partition, and Offset columns.

When set to true, these metadata columns are included in every table. When set to false, the driver hides these columns, but still receives the underlying metadata.

Consider the following points when deciding whether to disable this option:

• There is no performance benefit to hiding these columns. The Apache Kafka protocol sends them every time the driver consumes a message.
• The driver uses the Partition column to restrict SELECT statements to specific partitions. For example, to execute SELECT * FROM topic WHERE Partition IN (1, 2) the driver requests messages from only the first two partitions. Without the partition column the driver always consumes messages from all partitions, or whatever partitions are dictated by the current consumer group (if ConsumerGroupId is set).