I have a post covering PolyBase from SQL Server to SQL Server:
Historically, PolyBase has three separate external entities: external data sources, external file formats, and external tables. External data sources tell SQL Server where the remote data is stored. External file formats tell SQL Server what the shape of that data looks like—in other words, CSV, tab-separated, Parquet, ORC, etc. External tables tell SQL Server the structure of some data of a particular external file format at a particular external data source.
With PolyBase V2—connectivity with SQL Server, Cosmos DB, Oracle, Spark, Hive, and a boatload of other external data sources—we no longer need external file formats because we ingest structured data. Therefore, we only need an external data source and an external table. You will need SQL Server 2019 to play along and I’d recommend keeping up on CTPs—PolyBase is under active development so being a CTP behind may mean hitting bugs which have subsequently been fixed.
I want this to get even better, to the point where external tables are a no-brainer over linked servers in terms of performance.