Interactive Analysis and Big Data: Setting up Google Dremel a.k.a. Big Query API for our Big Data Exploits

Before you begin

Activate Google BigQuery API

Go to the Google API Console at https://developers.google.com/console and enable the BigQuery API. If you have an existing project with the BigQuery API enabled you can use it, or else you can create a new project and enable it.

Exercise Google Dremel by executing some Queries

Let us run some queries on public data exposed by Goole just to get a feel for Big Query using Google Dremel.

Open the Big Query Browser tool at https://bigquery.cloud.google.com/

Google has exposed several public tables that you can run queries against to exercise Big Query API. A full desciption of the same is 

listed here https://developers.google.com/bigquery/docs/sample-tables.

A complete description of Big Query's SQL syntax can be had from https://developers.google.com/bigquery/query-reference

In the query text, tables should be qualified in the format datasetId.tableId. 

Run a few queries

To run a query, click the Compose Query button, then enter the query SQL in the textbox at the top of the page and click Run Query. The results (or an error code) will be displayed below the query box.

Heaviest 10 children

SELECT weight_pounds, state, year, gestation_weeks FROM publicdata:samples.natality
ORDER BY weight_pounds DESC LIMIT 10;

Finding Juliet

SELECT word FROM publicdata:samples.shakespeare WHERE word="Juliet";

How many works of Shakespeare are there? 

SELECT corpus FROM publicdata:samples.shakespeare GROUP BY corpus;

Which are the longest works?

SELECT corpus, sum(word_count) AS wordcount FROM publicdata:samples.shakespeare GROUP BY corpus ORDER BY wordcount DESC;

References

https://developers.google.com/bigquery/browser-tool-quickstart