Abstract:
The disclosed embodiments relate to a system, a method and instructions embodied on a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium that facilitate executing an external command during query processing. While commencing execution of a query that streams data through a pipeline comprising consecutive commands that are chained together (including the external command), the system launches an external process that executes the external command. Next, as chunks of data are subsequently streamed through the pipeline during query processing, the system uses a transport protocol to communicate the chunks of data to and from the external process to facilitate executing the external command on the chunks of data, without terminating and re-launching the external process between chunks of data.