# Use a SerDe to create a table
<a name="serde-create-a-table"></a>

To use a SerDe when creating a table in Athena, use one of the following methods:
+ Specify `ROW FORMAT DELIMITED` and then use DDL statements to specify field delimiters, as in the following example. When you specify `ROW FORMAT DELIMITED`, Athena uses the LazySimpleSerDe by default.

  ```
  ROW FORMAT DELIMITED 
  FIELDS TERMINATED BY ','
  ESCAPED BY '\\'
  COLLECTION ITEMS TERMINATED BY '|'
  MAP KEYS TERMINATED BY ':'
  ```

  For examples of `ROW FORMAT DELIMITED`, see the following topics:

  [Lazy Simple SerDe for CSV, TSV, and custom-delimited files](lazy-simple-serde.md)

  [Query Amazon CloudFront logs](cloudfront-logs.md)

  [Query Amazon EMR logs](emr-logs.md)

  [Query Amazon VPC flow logs](vpc-flow-logs.md)

  [Use CTAS and INSERT INTO for ETL and data analysis](ctas-insert-into-etl.md)
+ Use `ROW FORMAT SERDE` to explicitly specify the type of SerDe that Athena should use when it reads and writes data to the table. The following example specifies the LazySimpleSerDe. To specify the delimiters, use `WITH SERDEPROPERTIES`. The properties specified by `WITH SERDEPROPERTIES` correspond to the separate statements (like `FIELDS TERMINATED BY`) in the `ROW FORMAT DELIMITED` example.

  ```
  ROW FORMAT SERDE 'org.apache.hadoop.hive.serde2.lazy.LazySimpleSerDe'
  WITH SERDEPROPERTIES (
  'serialization.format' = ',',
  'field.delim' = ',',
  'collection.delim' = '|',
  'mapkey.delim' = ':',
  'escape.delim' = '\\'
  )
  ```

  For examples of `ROW FORMAT SERDE`, see the following topics:

  [Avro SerDe](avro-serde.md)

  [Grok SerDe](grok-serde.md)

  [JSON SerDe libraries](json-serde.md)

  [Open CSV SerDe for processing CSV](csv-serde.md)

  [Regex SerDe](regex-serde.md)