protected List<TypeInfo> parseColumnTypes(String key) {
    final String columnTypeProperty = this.properties.getProperty(key, "");

    return columnTypeProperty.isEmpty() ? Collections.emptyList()
        : Collections.unmodifiableList(TypeInfoUtils.getTypeInfosFromTypeString(columnTypeProperty));
  }
Initialize the SerDe. By default, this will use one set of properties,
either the table properties or the partition properties. If a SerDe needs
access to both sets, it should override this method.

Eventually, once all SerDes have implemented this method, we should convert
it to an abstract method.

@param configuration Hadoop configuration
@param tableProperties Table properties
@param partitionProperties Partition properties (may be {@code null} if
         table has no partitions)
@throws NullPointerException if tableProperties is {@code null}
@throws SerDeException if SerDe fails to initialize
serde/src/java/org/apache/hadoop/hive/serde2/AbstractSerDe.java