VARIANT Support, Interactive Parquet File TUI: Hardwood 1.0.0.Beta2 Is Out

This article announces the release of Hardwood 1.0.0.Beta2, a new parser for Apache Parquet files. Key features include support for VARIANT columns, which allow storing semi-structured JSON-like data in a self-describing binary encoding, an interactive text-based UI (TUI) for examining Parquet file structure, improved performance, and more efficient reading from object storage. The article provides code examples demonstrating the PqVariant API for handling dynamically typed data, including extraction of primitives and nested objects. It also covers support for shredded variants and transparent reassembly.