**Why format choice matters**: Access pattern and tooling drive selection. **Parquet**: Columnar; compression; predicate pushdown; analytics standard. **Avro**: Row-based; schema evolution; good for streaming/CDC. **ORC**: Columnar; Hive; ACID. **Strategy**: Parquet for analytics; Avro for events/CDC; partition by date. **Scalability trade-offs**: Columnar = better for analytics; row = better for streaming. **Cost implications**: Columnar = less I/O for column access; partitioning reduces scan....
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