Quickstart using the web UI in the GCP Console

You can use the BigQuery web UI in the GCP Console as a visual interface to complete tasks like running queries, loading data, and exporting data. This quickstart shows you how to query tables in a public dataset and how to load sample data into BigQuery using the GCP Console.

Before you begin

1. Sign in to your Google Account.

   If you don't already have one, sign up for a new account.

2. Select or create a GCP project.

   Note: If you don't plan to keep the resources that you create in this procedure, create a project instead of selecting an existing project. After you finish these steps, you can delete the project, removing all resources associated with the project.

   Go to the project selector page

3. BigQuery is automatically enabled in new projects. To activate BigQuery in a pre-existing project, go to Enable the BigQuery API.

   Enable the API

4. BigQuery provides a sandbox if you do not want to provide a credit card or enable billing for your project. The steps in this topic work for a project whether or not your project has billing enabled. If you optionally want to enable billing, see Learn how to enable billing.

Query a public dataset

The BigQuery web UI provides an interface to query tables, including public datasets offered by BigQuery.

In this example, you query the USA Name Data public dataset to determine the most common names in the US between 1910 and 2013.

BigQuery public datasets are displayed by default in the GCP Console. To open the public datasets project manually, enter the following URL in your browser.

https://console.cloud.google.com/bigquery?p=bigquery-public-data&page=project

To query data in a public dataset:

1. Go to the BigQuery web UI in the GCP Console.

   Go to the BigQuery web UI

2. At the top right of the window, click Compose new query. If this text is dimmed, then the Query editor is already open.

   

3. Copy and paste the following query into the query text area.

   SELECT
     name, gender,
     SUM(number) AS total
   FROM
     `bigquery-public-data.usa_names.usa_1910_2013`
   GROUP BY
     name, gender
   ORDER BY
     total DESC
   LIMIT
     10
   

4. In the lower right of the window, click the green check mark to view the query validator.

   

   A green check mark icon is displayed if the query is valid. If the query is invalid, a red exclamation point icon is displayed. If the query is valid, the validator also shows the amount of data the query will process when you run it. The data processed is helpful for determining the cost of running the query.

5. Click Run. The query results page displays below the query window. At the top of the query results page, the time elapsed and the data processed by the query are displayed. Below the Query complete... message, a table displays the query results with a header row containing the name of each column you selected in the query.

   

Load data into a table

Next, you load data into a table and query it.

Download the data

The file you're downloading contains approximately 7 MB of data about popular baby names, and it is provided by the US Social Security Administration.

1. Download the baby names zip file.

2. Unzip the file onto your machine.

   The zip file contains a NationalReadMe.pdf file that describes the dataset. Learn more about the dataset.

3. Open the file named yob2014.txt to see what the data looks like. The file is a comma-separated value (CSV) file with the following three columns: name, sex (M or F), and number of children with that name. The file has no header row.

4. Note the location of the yob2014.txt file so that you can find it later.

Create a dataset

Next, create a dataset in the web UI to store the data.

1. If necessary, open the BigQuery web UI.

   Go to the BigQuery web UI

2. In the navigation panel, in the Resources section, click your project name.

3. On the right side, in the details panel, click Create dataset.

   

4. On the Create dataset page:

   • For Dataset ID, enter babynames.

   • For Data location, choose United States (US). Currently, the public datasets are stored in the US multi-region location. For simplicity, you should place your dataset in the same location.

     

5. Leave all of the other default settings in place and click Create dataset.

Load the data into a new table

Next, load the data into a new table.

1. In the navigation panel, in the Resources section, click the babynames dataset that you just created.

2. On the right side, in the details panel, click Create table.

   Use the default values for all settings unless otherwise indicated.

3. On the Create table page:

   • For Source, click Empty table and choose Upload.
   • For Select file, click Browse, navigate to the yob2014.txt file and click Open.
   • For File format, click Avro and choose CSV.
   • In the Destination section, for Table name, enter names_2014.

   • In the Schema section, click the Edit as text toggle and paste the following schema definition in the box.

       name:string,gender:string,count:integer
       

     

4. Click Create table.

5. Wait for BigQuery to create the table and load the data. While BigQuery loads the data, a (1 running) string displays beside the job history in the navigation panel. The string disappears after the data is loaded.

Preview the table

After the (1 running) string disappears, you can access the table. To preview the first few rows of the data:

1. Select babynames > names_2014 in the navigation panel.

2. In the details panel, click the Preview tab.

   

Query the table

Now that you've loaded data into a table, you can query it. The process is identical to the previous example, except that this time, you're querying your table instead of a public table.

1. If necessary, click the Compose new query button. Unless you hid the query window previously, it should still be visible.

2. Copy and paste the following query into the query text area. This query retrieves the top 5 baby names for US males in 2014.

   SELECT
     name,
     count
   FROM
     `babynames.names_2014`
   WHERE
     gender = 'M'
   ORDER BY
     count DESC
   LIMIT
     5
   

3. Click Run. The results are displayed below the query window.

   

Clean up

To avoid incurring charges to your GCP account for the resources used in this quickstart:

1. If necessary, open the BigQuery web UI.

   Go to the BigQuery web UI

2. In the navigation panel, in the Resources section, click the babynames dataset you created.

3. In the details panel, on the right side, click Delete dataset. This action deletes the dataset, the table, and all the data.

4. In the Delete dataset dialog box, confirm the delete command by typing the name of your dataset (babynames) and then click Delete.

What's next

• To learn more about the BigQuery web UI in the GCP Console, see BigQuery web UI.

• To learn how to load a JSON file with nested and repeated data, see Loading nested and repeated JSON data on the Loading JSON data from Cloud Storage page.

• To learn more about loading data, see Loading data into BigQuery.

• To learn more about querying data, see Querying data.

• To learn how to create an application using the Google BigQuery API, see Create a simple application with the API.