Introduction to BigQuery INFORMATION_SCHEMA

Beta

This feature is in a pre-release state and might change or have limited support. For more information, see the product launch stages.

INFORMATION_SCHEMA is a series of views that provide access to:

• dataset metadata
• routine metadata
• table metadata
• view metadata

Pricing

For projects that use on-demand pricing, queries against INFORMATION_SCHEMA views incur a minimum of 10 MB of data processing charges, even if the bytes processed by the query are less than 10 MB. 10 MB is the minimum billing amount for on-demand queries. For more information, see On-demand pricing.

Because INFORMATION_SCHEMA queries are not cached, you are charged each time you run an INFORMATION_SCHEMA query, even if the query text is the same each time you run it.

You are not charged storage fees for the INFORMATION_SCHEMA views.

Syntax

With the exception of SCHEMATA and SCHEMATA_OPTIONS, INFORMATION_SCHEMA views must have a dataset specifier.

-- Returns metadata for tables in a single dataset.
SELECT * FROM myDataset.INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES;

To get metadata from a different project, prepend the project ID to the view.

SELECT * FROM myOtherProject.myDataset.INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES;

Limitations

BigQuery INFORMATION_SCHEMA is subject to the following limitations:

• BigQuery INFORMATION_SCHEMA queries must be in standard SQL syntax. INFORMATION_SCHEMA does not support legacy SQL.
• INFORMATION_SCHEMA query results are not cached.
• Currently, INFORMATION_SCHEMA cannot be used to retrieve metadata on partitions in partitioned tables.
• Currently, INFORMATION_SCHEMA views cannot be used in DDL statements.