As organizations increasingly rely on diverse data sources, the ability to efficiently work with external data within Vertica becomes imperative. This session is designed for data professionals seeking to enhance their data integration capabilities. This presentation will provide an in-depth look at Vertica's support for external and flex tables, key features that facilitate seamless access to and integration of external data. Attendees will learn how external tables enable the querying of data stored outside of Vertica without the need for loading the data into the database, while flex tables offer a flexible schema to easily manage semi-structured data like JSON or XML.