Manage your data using Bigtable Studio

This page explains how to explore and manage your Bigtable data using Bigtable Studio in the Google Cloud console.

Bigtable Studio includes an Explorer pane that integrates with the following:

  • Query builder, an interactive form that lets you build and run a query without writing code
  • Query editor, where you can create and execute SQL commands
  • SQL query results table

If you're new to Bigtable, learn how to create an instance and write data with the cbt CLI .

Required roles

To get the permissions that you need to query a table, ask your administrator to grant you the Bigtable reader (roles/bigtable.reader) IAM role on the instance that contains the table. For more information about granting roles, see Manage access to projects, folders, and organizations.

You might also be able to get the required permissions through custom roles or other predefined roles.

Explore your data

You can use the explorer to perform the following actions on your Bigtable resources:

Bigtable resource Explorer actions
Table
  • Create a new table
  • Create a backup
  • Prevent deletion
  • Edit
  • Delete
  • View a sample query
  • View backups
  • Monitor
  • Export to Cloud Storage
Column families
  • Add a column family to a table
Specific column family
  • Edit a garbage collection policy

To access the Explorer, follow these steps:

  1. In the Google Cloud console, open the Bigtable instances page.

    Go to instances list

  2. Select an instance from the list.

  3. In the navigation menu, click Bigtable Studio. The Explorer pane displays a list of tables and authorized views in the instance.

Query your data in the query builder

The query builder is an interactive form that lets you send read requests to the Bigtable Data API from the Google Cloud console without needing to write code or SQL statements. For more information, see Build queries in the console.

Query your data with SQL in the query editor

Using the query editor, you can run any combination of SQL SELECT statements. Statements must be separated by a semicolon.

Statements are executed based on the order in which you enter them in the query editor.

To query your data, follow these steps:

  1. In the Google Cloud console, open the Bigtable instances page.

    Go to instances list

  2. Select an instance from the list.

  3. In the navigation menu, click Bigtable Studio.

  4. Compose a query:

    1. Open a new tab by clicking and then choosing Editor.
    2. When the query editor appears, write your query. If the query is valid SQL, a Valid message is displayed.
    3. Optional: To return all cells in the queried columns instead of only the most recent cell, append the table ID with (with_history => TRUE).

  5. Optional: To format your statement in SQL style, click Format.

  6. Click Run. The results of your query appear in the Results table.

  7. To view a formatted display of a row's data, click the row in the results table. The Row details pane opens. Each column qualifier and its value are displayed on a new line. If you run the query using (with_history => TRUE), each cell in a column is presented as a struct that includes the value and timestamp for the cell.

  8. Optional: To run only a selected portion of the text in the editor, highlight it, and then click Run selected. The results of the highlighted query appear in the Results table.

To remove all text from the query editor, click Clear.

For more information, including examples, about crafting SQL statements to query your Bigtable data, see the GoogleSQL for Bigtable overview.

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