Final answer:
An advantage of the ORC file format is its efficient compression, enabling higher data density and improved performance. Additionally, it supports predicate pushdown and columnar storage, and is compatible with multiple I/O engines for flexibility.
Step-by-step explanation:
One advantage of the ORC (Optimized Row Columnar) file format is efficient compression. This format enables more data to be stored in less space, which can significantly save on storage costs and improve performance by reducing I/O operations during data reads.
ORC files also allow for both light-weight compression with codecs like Snappy and heavy-weight compression through Zlib.
Furthermore, ORC supports advanced features such as predicate pushdown, where queries can filter out unnecessary data blocks during reads, and efficient columnar storage, which optimizes query performance by reading only the necessary columns for computation. The support by multiple I/O engines, such as Hive and Presto, adds to the versatility and usability of the ORC format within the Hadoop ecosystem and relevant Big Data platforms.