Querying your data is the beginning of your journey with BigQuery. Set aside how satisfying and insightful that might be, you need to use that data for your analysis and even potentially present or share it.
In this article, we will introduce you to the main options which are available to do so.
Choose what to do with the output
You may have noticed that once you run a query, a “Query results” panel opens and provides information about it as well as the output.
This is where you can choose what to do with the data. In some cases, reading the data from this output panel can actually do the job. But you’ll see that BigQuery offers some handy integrations.
Save results
First of all, by clicking on “Save results”, BigQuery provides you with different options, such as saving to CSV or to Google Sheets, or even to JSON.
Your options can differ based on the amount of data we’re talking about (save a local CSV file is limited to 10 MB, for instance). But you have here very easy ways to take your data out to work on it or use it elsewhere.
Open your data in other solutions
Still in the “Save results” panel, you have the option to “Open your data” in external tools such as Looker Studio, Google Sheets or even Canvas or with Python.
These options are the best to build a better, more engaging and structured, data visualization.
Connect to a table or view
What’s also great with BigQuery is that you always have the option to save an output to a table. Or even have views which will pull the data from the query of your choice to cache (on demand) the data you need.
Once the data is stored or accessible on demand (here is one of the documentation related to that), you can use a connector, such as the Looker Studio native one, to access the data in question and use it external tools to build visualizations or even work further with your data.
Use the API
Lastly, a great solution can be to use the BigQuery API. You can use it to export your BigQuery data to a data warehouse, or to access and even update it from your project in a software or script. It is quite easy to use with Python, for instance.
Go explore the options yourself! Don’t forget to check out our full training to master the GSC data in BQ.
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