File compression formats and container file formats
<p>It is generally said that any compression format like Gzip, when used along with a container file format like avro and sequence (file formats), will make the compression format splittable.</p>

<p>Does this mean that the blocks in the container format get compressed based on the preferred compression (like gzip) or something else.  Can someone please explain this? Thanks!</p>

<p>Well, I think the question requires an update.</p>

<p>Update:</p>

<p>Do we have a straightforward approach to convert a large file in a non-splittable file compression format (like Gzip) into a  splittable file (using a container file format such as Avro, Sequence or Parquet) to be processed by MapReduce?</p>

<p>Note: I do not mean to ask for workarounds such as uncompressing the file, and again compressing the data using a splittable compression format.</p>