Google BigQuery Analytics

by Jordan Tigani, Siddartha Naidu

How to effectively use BigQuery, avoid common mistakes, and execute sophisticated queries against large datasets Google BigQuery Analytics is the perfect guide for business and data analysts who want the latest tips on running complex queries and writing code to communicate with the BigQuery API. The book uses real-world examples to demonstrate current best practices and techniques, and also explains and demonstrates streaming ingestion, transformation via Hadoop in Google Compute engine, AppEngine datastore integration, and using GViz with Tableau to generate charts of query results. In addition to the mechanics of BigQuery, the book also covers the architecture of the underlying Dremel query engine, providing a thorough understanding that leads to better query results.


Features a companion website that includes all code and data sets from the book Uses real-world examples to explain everything analysts need to know to effectively use BigQuery Includes web application examples coded in Python

Genres: Technology, Reference, Nonfiction, Programming

528 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[Johnno · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even though the book has been published a while ago and a new dialect has been released (standard SQL, however the "legacy SQL" dialect is still supported and as far as I see is still used by many), this book holds up very well. The balance between examples and theory is great, also the level of detail and what happens "behind the scenes" was precicely at the right level. Very useful book when you are planning on working with bigquery.

[RK Kuppala · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was published in 2014 - on the public cloud release timeline, thats long long ago. A lot has changed since this was published, BigQuery now supports standard SQL dialect, Google made tons of interesting public datasets available, Google Data Studio was released that can connect to BigQuery and start visualizing interesting public datasets with little effort and make normal humans like me feel like they are finally doing something like data science. Even with all these changes, this book still is relevant due to the way it is written. I liked the insider info, anecdotes etc. Look out for chapters related to Query execution - they are fascinating.

So you want to learn BigQuery - should you buy it? Yes. I know you can follow GCP's medium handle and get access to all exciting stuff happening with BigQuery right now (also follow Felipe Hoffa and
Valliappa Lakshmanan). But still, I would rate this book as a must read for those who would like to get started with BQ and go deeper.

[Gene Ishchuk · Rating 3 out of 5]

it is quite dated aaaaand I was expecting more stuff for laymen like me (meaning for those using UI only)

[Marian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very outdated content

[Sergii Khomenko · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good in-depth overview of Google BigQuery; starting with storage and processing technologies, and with good explanation of technology foundation.

Can't say that book is a complete disruptor, and after it I'm gonna rewrite all my BigQuery queries, but currently I have good explanation for many of points. Definitely will make my work with BigQuery more efficient and effective.

Book is quite big(500 pages), but also covers different aspects of using BigQuery from third-party tools(Hadoop, Google Compute Engine, R, Python Pandas, SciPy, etc )

[Jose Papo · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE book about Google BigQuery. BigQuery is an amazing solution to understand and process huge amounts of data. And the best thing about it is that it has a query language very similar to SQL so it's easier to use than other solutions like MapReduce. Also it's nice that you can bulk load data and also ingest it as a continuous stream with 100,000 simultaneous records per second! The first chapters are also great as context and background about Big Data solutions and when to use each one.