Step Back: What is BigQuery?

Before I start diving into GA4 data in BigQuery, it is time to step back a bit and explain what BigQuery is. If you already know what BigQuery is then you can ignore this and wait for the next email but If you are not then continue reading.

In simple terms, BigQuery is a way to store a large amount of data.

You might be familiar with the term “database”. If you are then essentially BigQuery is a database.

When most people talk about a database, they talk about a storage system for transactional data, the data that is used to power an application such as a website, offline store checkout system, customer support system, etc. Such databases are also called OLTP (online transaction processing) databases.

However, BigQuery is a different flavor of a database, called a Data Warehouse.

A Data Warehouse stores data for analyzing and reporting purposes.

While the data in an OLPT database is organized for faster queries of individual data points, the data in a warehouse is organized and optimized for faster analysis and reporting.

To access, read, and manipulate the data stored in any type of database (including data warehouses), you use a language called “SQL” short for “Structured Query Language”. The command that you write in SQL is called SQL Query.

SQL is a universal language for most of the database systems provided e.g. Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, BigQuery, etc. Once you learn SQL for one system, you can easily learn SQL for another system. Most of the syntax is common with a few differences.

Features and Benefits of BigQuery