Google Cloud Bigquery Overview Diagram

Ludovic Emo
4 min readSep 24, 2023

So many features

Google has added from the general availability so many features to Bigquery and around Bigquery, that this is now hard to have a full overview, this is the goal of this article to try to list them and to build an overview diagram.

Help wanted : This is a draft, your comments are welcome if some other important adherent feature is missing, or errors.

We will not go into the details of each feature here, to have more details, you can always consult the Google Documentation: https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/docs/introduction

APIs

First of all, we are not talking here of only one single API, the table below lists no less than 9 APIs directly Bigquery related and 5 APIs very close apis (KMS, DLP, …)

  • BigQuery API / bigquery.googleapis.com
    A data platform for customers to create, manage, share and query data.Note: includes Bigquery ML.
  • BigQuery Storage API / bigquerystorage.googleapis.com
    Google BigQuery API is a data platform for group of users to create, manage, share and query data.
  • Bigquery Data Transfer Service API / bigquerydatatransfer.googleapis.com
    Transfers data from partner SaaS applications to Google BigQuery on a scheduled, managed basis.
  • BigQuery Connection API / bigqueryconnection.googleapis.com
    Allows users to manage BigQuery connections to external data sources
  • Bigquery BigLake API / biglake.googleapis.com
    BigLake is a storage engine that unifies data warehouses and lakes by enabling BigQuery and open source frameworks like Spark to access data with fine-grained access control.
  • Google Cloud Data Catalog API / datacatalog.googleapis.com
    A data discovery and metadata management service.
  • BigQuery Data Policy API / bigquerydatapolicy.googleapis.com
    Allows users to manage BigQuery data policies.
  • Dataplex API / dataplex.googleapis.com
    To manage the lifecycle of data lakes.
  • Cloud DLP API / dlp.googleapis.com
    To detect Sensitive Data within the BigQuery data
  • Cloud KMS API / cloudkms.googleapis.com
    All data assets residing in BigQuery managed storage support CMEK
  • BigQuery Reservation API / bigqueryreservation.googleapis.com
    A service to modify your BigQuery flat-rate reservations.
  • Cloud Dataform / dataform.googleapis.com
    Service to develop, version control, and operationalize SQL pipelines in BigQuery.
  • BigQuery Analytics Hub API / analyticshub.googleapis.com
    Exchange data and analytics assets securely and efficiently.
  • Cloud AI Companion API for Duet AI / cloudaicompanion.googleapis.com
    Cloud AI Companion API for Duet AI
  • BigQuery Migration API / bigquerymigration.googleapis.com
    The migration service, exposing apis for migration jobs operations, and agent management.

## Categories

I will now try to list the involved features categories:

  • Core Services
    The well known Datasets, tables, views, routines & jobs
  • Transfers with the Bigquery Data Transfer API
    for example from external Cloud Providers (AWS S3, Azure Blob Storage)
    from Google Saas such as Campaign Manager, Google Ads, Google Play, …)
    from Datawarehouses (Teradata, AWS Redshift)
    from 3rd parties (Salesforce CRM, Adobe Analytics, …)
    and also copy data from BQ datasets, with scheduled queries), Google Cloud Storage
  • Import data from Google Cloud Storage, Google Drive
  • Use Bigquery data within Google Spreadsheet with Connected Sheets
  • Use live connection on your queries with the Bigquery Connection API
    through the Biglake API to AWS S3, Azure Blob Storage, Apache Iceberg, Cloud Storage structured and unstructured data
    through Federated queries to Google Cloud Spanner & Cloud SQL
    through remote functions on Google Cloud Functions & Cloud Run
  • Bigquery Migration Service
    Tool helping to plan your migration project, migrate your legacy queries
  • Data Plex, Data Catalog & Bigquery Data Policy
    To manage your data, setup column-level permissions & masking
  • Bigquery Analytics Hub
    to expose and even monetize your data
  • Optimize your Bigquery costs with the Bigquery Reservation API
  • Sensitive Data Protection
    Use Google Cloud DLP API to detect the BQ tables containing sensitive data and then potentially setup specific permissions or measures
  • Cloud KMS
    Encrypt Bigquery data / CMEK
  • Cloud Dataform
    Build SQL / SQLX workflows & workspaces with git capabilities
  • ODBC / JDBC connectivity for Bigquery with the Simba 3rd party drivers
  • Vertex AI ML & Gen AI & BQ ML features
    Bigquery ML
    Notebooks
    Use Vertex AI Feature store, fundation models within Bigquery
  • Vizualize and use data
    within Tableau, Looker, LookerStudio
    visualize geospatial data with Bigquery Geo Viz

Diagrams

Help wanted : This is a draft, your comments are welcome if some other important adherent feature are missing, or errors.

Core assets

Features

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