Bigquery Basics

BigQuery Basics

BigQuery is a serverless, AI-ready data platform that enables high-speed analysis of large datasets using SQL and Python. Its disaggregated architecture separates compute and storage, allowing them to scale independently while providing built-in machine learning, geospatial analysis, and business intelligence capabilities.

Setup and Basic Usage

1. Enable the BigQuery API:

``bash gcloud services enable bigquery.googleapis.com --quiet ``

1. Create a Dataset:

``bash bq mk --dataset --location=US my_dataset ``

1. Create a Table:

Create a file named schema.json with your table schema:

``json [ { "name": "name", "type": "STRING", "mode": "REQUIRED" }, { "name": "post_abbr", "type": "STRING", "mode": "NULLABLE" } ] ``

Then create the table with the bq tool:

``bash bq mk --table my_dataset.mytable schema.json ``

1. Run a Query:

``bash bq query --use_legacy_sql=false \ 'SELECT name FROM bigquery-public-data.usanames.usa1910_2013 \ WHERE state = "TX" LIMIT 10' ``

Reference Directory

• [Core Concepts](references/core-concepts.md): Storage types, analytics

workflows, and BigQuery Studio features.

• [CLI Usage](references/cli-usage.md): Essential bq command-line tool

operations for managing data and jobs.

• [Client Libraries](references/client-library-usage.md): Using Google Cloud

client libraries for Python, Java, Node.js, and Go.

• [MCP Usage](references/mcp-usage.md): Using the BigQuery remote MCP server and

Gemini CLI extension.

• [Infrastructure as Code](references/iac-usage.md): Terraform examples for

datasets, tables, and reservations.

• [IAM & Security](references/iam-security.md): Roles, permissions, and data

governance best practices.

If you need product information not found in these references, use the Developer Knowledge MCP server search_documents tool.

Related Skills

• [BigQuery AI & ML Skill](../bigquery-ai-ml):

SKILL.md file for BigQuery AI and ML capabilities (forecast, anomaly detection, text generation).

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: google
• Source: google/skills
• License: Apache-2.0

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.