Getting metadata about views using INFORMATION_SCHEMA

INFORMATION_SCHEMA.VIEWS contains metadata about views.

Before you begin

Grant Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles that give users the necessary permissions to perform each task in this document.

Required permissions

To get view metadata, you need the following IAM permissions:

  • bigquery.tables.get
  • bigquery.tables.list

Each of the following predefined IAM roles includes the permissions that you need in order to get view metadata:

  • roles/bigquery.admin
  • roles/bigquery.dataEditor
  • roles/bigquery.metadataViewer
  • roles/bigquery.dataViewer

For more information about granular BigQuery permissions, see roles and permissions.

Syntax

Queries against this view must have a dataset or region qualifier.

-- Returns metadata for views in a single dataset.
SELECT * FROM myDataset.INFORMATION_SCHEMA.VIEWS;

-- Returns metadata for all views in a region.
SELECT * FROM region-us.INFORMATION_SCHEMA.VIEWS;

The VIEWS view

When you query the INFORMATION_SCHEMA.VIEWS view, the query results contain one row for each view in a dataset.

The INFORMATION_SCHEMA.VIEWS view has the following schema:

Column name Data type Value
TABLE_CATALOG STRING The name of the project that contains the dataset
TABLE_SCHEMA STRING The name of the dataset that contains the view also referred to as the dataset id
TABLE_NAME STRING The name of the view also referred to as the table id
VIEW_DEFINITION STRING The SQL query that defines the view
CHECK_OPTION STRING The value returned is always NULL
USE_STANDARD_SQL STRING YES if the view was created by using a standard SQL query; NO if useLegacySql is set to true

Examples

Example 1:

The following example retrieves all columns from the INFORMATION_SCHEMA.VIEWS view except for check_option which is reserved for future use. The metadata returned is for all views in mydataset in your default project — myproject.

To run the query against a project other than your default project, add the project ID to the dataset in the following format: `project_id`.dataset.INFORMATION_SCHEMA.view; for example, `myproject`.mydataset.INFORMATION_SCHEMA.VIEWS.

SELECT
  * EXCEPT (check_option)
FROM
  mydataset.INFORMATION_SCHEMA.VIEWS;

The result is similar to the following:

  +----------------+---------------+---------------+---------------------------------------------------------------------+------------------+
  | table_catalog  | table_schema  |  table_name   |                        view_definition                              | use_standard_sql |
  +----------------+---------------+---------------+---------------------------------------------------------------------+------------------+
  | myproject      | mydataset     | myview        | SELECT column1, column2 FROM [myproject:mydataset.mytable] LIMIT 10 | NO               |
  +----------------+---------------+---------------+---------------------------------------------------------------------+------------------+

Note that the results show that this view was created by using a legacy SQL query.

Example 2:

The following example retrieves the SQL query and query syntax used to define myview in mydataset in your default project — myproject.

To run the query against a project other than your default project, add the project ID to the dataset in the following format: `project_id`.dataset.INFORMATION_SCHEMA.view; for example, `myproject`.mydataset.INFORMATION_SCHEMA.VIEWS.

SELECT
  table_name, view_definition, use_standard_sql
FROM
  mydataset.INFORMATION_SCHEMA.VIEWS
WHERE
  table_name = 'myview';

The result is similar to the following:

  +---------------+---------------------------------------------------------------+------------------+
  |  table_name   |                        view_definition                        | use_standard_sql |
  +---------------+---------------------------------------------------------------+------------------+
  | myview        | SELECT column1, column2, column3 FROM mydataset.mytable       | YES              |
  +---------------+---------------------------------------------------------------+------------------+

Note that the results show that this view was created by using a standard SQL query.