Enabling the BigQuery Data Transfer Service

To use the BigQuery Data Transfer Service, you must complete the following steps as a project Owner:

  • Create a project and enable the BigQuery API
  • Enable the BigQuery Data Transfer Service

For more information on IAM roles, see Understanding roles in the IAM documentation.

Creating a project and enabling the BigQuery API

Before using the BigQuery Data Transfer Service, you must create a project and, in most cases, enable billing on that project. You can use an existing project with the BigQuery Data Transfer Service, or you can create a new one. If you are using an existing project, you may also need to enable the BigQuery API.

To create a project and enable the BigQuery API:

  1. In the Google Cloud Console, go to the project selector page.

    Go to project selector

  2. Select or create a Google Cloud project.

  3. Enable billing on your project for all transfers. You are billed $0 for free transfers.

    Enabling billing is only required once per project, even if you are transferring data from multiple sources. Billing must also be enabled to query the data in BigQuery, after the data is transferred.

    Learn how to confirm that billing is enabled on your project.

  4. BigQuery is automatically enabled in new projects. To activate BigQuery in an existing project, enable the BigQuery API.

    Enable the BigQuery API

Enabling the BigQuery Data Transfer Service

Before you can create a transfer, you must enable the BigQuery Data Transfer Service. To enable the BigQuery Data Transfer Service, you must be granted the Owner role for your project.

To enable the BigQuery Data Transfer Service:

Console

  1. Open the BigQuery Data Transfer API page in the API library.

  2. From the dropdown menu, select the appropriate project.

  3. Click the ENABLE button.

    Enable the Data Transfer API

Granting bigquery.admin access

All users that will create transfers must be granted the bigquery.admin predefined IAM role. The bigquery.admin role includes the following BigQuery Data Transfer Service permissions:

  • bigquery.transfers.update
  • bigquery.transfers.get

The bigquery.admin role also includes the bigquery.datasets.update permission. Thebigquery.datasets.update permission is required to write data to the transfer's destination dataset.

To grant the bigquery.admin role:

Console

  1. Open the IAM page in the Cloud Console

    Open the IAM page

  2. Click Select a project.

  3. Select a project and click Open.

  4. Click Add to add new members to the project and set their permissions.

  5. In the Add members dialog:

    • For Members, enter the email address of the user or group.
    • In the Select a role drop-down, click BigQuery > BigQuery Admin.

    • Click Add.

      Grant admin

gcloud

You can use the gcloud command-line tool to grant a user or group the bigquery.admin role.

To add a single binding to your project's IAM policy, type the following command. To add a user, supply the --member flag in the format user:user@example.com. To add a group, supply the --member flag in the format group:group@example.com.

gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding project_id \
--member group/user:address \
--role roles/bigquery.admin

Where:

  • project_id is your project ID.
  • group/user is either group or user.
  • address is the user or group's email address.

For example:

gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding myproject \
--member group:group@example.com \
--role roles/bigquery.admin

The command outputs the updated policy: 

    bindings:
    - members:
      - group:group@example.com
        role: roles/bigquery.admin

For more information on IAM roles in BigQuery, see Predefined roles and permissions.

Next steps

After enabling the BigQuery Data Transfer Service, create a transfer for your data source.

Google Software as a Service (SaaS) apps External cloud storage providers Data warehouses In addition, several third-party transfers are available in the Google Cloud Marketplace.