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Native interface (TCP)

The native protocol is used in the command-line client, for inter-server communication during distributed query processing, and also in some language clients (e.g. clickhouse-go).

ClickHouse provides official specifications for the native protocol and the columnar format it carries:

  • Native Protocol — packet framing, the connection state machine, version negotiation, and the body of every non-Block message.
  • Native Format — the Block and column structure, the per-type encodings, and the compression frame. This format also appears outside the TCP protocol, for example with FORMAT Native over HTTP.