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Introduction

If you want to get the most out of any tool, whether it is a database or a rotary power drill, it is important to know how it works. This lets you develop an intuition about how you can use the tool effectively. The goal of this book is to help you develop an intuition about BigQuery, which can enable you to make your own decisions about when BigQuery is the right tool for the job, how you can improve your query efficiency, and how you can apply BigQuery in unanticipated situations.

It is also important to have good examples that you can incorporate into your code. This book provides source code to help you start using BigQuery in your applications and query examples that can help you solve complex problems in SQL. In addition, we show you how to write code to get your data in, how to query and visualize that data, and how to get it out again.

The target audience for this book is a data scientist who wants to analyze data with BigQuery, a developer who wants to integrate BigQuery into their data pipelines, or someone who is trying to determine whether BigQuery is the right tool to use. Each type of reader might want something different from the book; the “How to Read This Book” section provides guidelines for a custom path through the chapters.

Overview of the Book and Technology

Both of us, Siddartha Naidu and Jordan Tigani, have been part of the BigQuery team since a group of Google engineers sat around a dining room table to brainstorm what kind of product to ...