Publish / file · All operations

Save in a data tool's own format

A variant of Write another file format

Write a table, project or object to the native or serialised file format of a data tool.

Status

In arcform

Not built yet

arcform does not do this yet. Its place on the roadmap

What other tools call it

Meridian's classification; an independent blind rating agreed on 95.7% of 324 rows (variant, version 3).

Alteryx Designer (1)
  • Profile Outputread 2026-09-27

    Write a profile or collection of profiles to a Profile Set .scd file

Apache Hop (2)
  • Data set outputread 2026-09-27

    Write rows to a reusable data set stored in project metadata

  • Serialize To Fileread 2026-09-27

    Write rows and metadata to a binary Hop serialised file

EasyMorph (1)
  • Export datasetread 2026-09-27

    Write the table to EasyMorph's native .dset file

KNIME Analytics Platform (1)
  • Table Writerread 2026-09-27

    Write a table to a file in KNIME's native .table format

OpenRefine (1)
Pentaho Data Integration (1)
Polars (1)
  • DataFrame.serializeread 2026-09-27

    Write a frame to Polars' own serialised form, as a file or string

RapidMiner Studio (2)
  • Storeread 2026-09-27

    Save a data table, model or other object into the repository

  • Store to Fileread 2026-09-27

    Serialise any process object into a file object

VisiData (1)
  • vds (saver)read 2026-09-23

    Save as VisiData multi-sheet file with column metadata

Background

In OpenRefine, a project can be exported as a .tar.gz archive that another OpenRefine installation can import as a new project.[1] KNIME's Table Writer node writes a data table in KNIME's internal format to a file, which can be read using the Table Reader node.[2] In EasyMorph, a dataset can be exported to a .dset file in the native EasyMorph format, which loads very fast because there is no data conversion.[3]

When to use it

OpenRefine exports the full project with all of its history, but not any current views or applied facets.[1] OpenRefine project archives contain confidential data from previous steps, which remains accessible to anyone who has the archive.[1] In EasyMorph, one or more columns of a .dset file can be encrypted with a password, but its custom properties are not encrypted.[3]

Serialisation translates a data structure or object state into a format that can be stored and reconstructed later, possibly in a different computer environment.[4] Python's pickle module is not secure: malicious pickle data can execute arbitrary code during unpickling, the loading of pickled data.[5] Apache Hop's Serialize To File transform supports a write-once access pattern and does not support appending to existing files.[6] Use a tool's own format for a hand-off back into the same tool, such as a checkpoint or a cache, and an open format for anything another program or a later version must read. (Meridian's view)

The method

Apache Hop's Serialize To File transform stores rows in a binary file together with their metadata, so the content does not have to be parsed when read back.[6] Polars' DataFrame.serialize writes to a file or string, in a binary format by default or in JSON.[7]

RapidMiner's Store to File operator wraps an object as a file object without converting it, and the conversion happens when a later operator uses the file object.[8]

Sources

  1. [1]Exporting your work | OpenRefinedocumentation
  2. [2]Table Writerdocumentation
  3. [3]EXPORT DATASET (.dset) [EasyMorph Help]documentation
  4. [4]Serialization - Wikipediasecondary source
  5. [5]pickle — Python object serialization — Python 3.15.2 documentationdocumentation
  6. [6]Serialize To File | Apache Hopdocumentation
  7. [7]polars.DataFrame.serialize — Polars documentationdocumentation
  8. [8]Store to File - Rapidminer Documentationdocumentation