BigQuery Reviews

We implement for customers. We work as a global company and we have 350,000 employees, we serve clients across all industries. There are many use cases. There is no use case that we would only apply in the context of BigQuery and not with Snowflake, or not with Synapse, et cetera. It is use case agnostic.

It can be for fraud, it can be for marketing analytics, customer 360, or any kind of real-time analytics. You can use it for all sorts of stuff.

It's a stable, reliable solution. It has a good reputation for that. 

The product can scale.

As a cloud solution, it's easy to set up. 

To be very specific, here in the Middle East, I'm based out of the UAE, and Google has a very narrow footprint, a very limited footprint here in the region. There is a lack or absence of local data residency compliance. They don't have a local data center here. Therefore, most of the big organizations like banks, and companies in the highly regulated public sector, are not using BigQuery products as it means that the data will have to move out of the country. We'd like to see more local data residency.

We've been implementing this solution since the inception of these products. We are Platinum Elite partners with most vendors.

The solution has a reputation for being stable. It's not a problem. 

The solution is  scalable up to a certain extent. According to the benchmarks, they would be stronger on the one hand, however, depending on the criteria that you're using, what kind of volumes, the velocity, et cetera, it can scale.

I've never dealt directly with technical support. I can't speak to how helpful or responsive they are. 

I did not handle the initial setup. That said, solutions like BigQuery, as opposed to non-cloud, on-prem versions equivalents are generally more straightforward to set up.

How long it takes to set up depends on the requirements. Typically, it takes six months to one year for end-to-end implementation. 

We have data engineers that can handle deployments. How many are needed depends on the scope of the project. 

I don't deal with licensing aspects of the product. The licenses are always purchased by our clients. 

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

Right now, we are downloading raw Google Analytics four data to BigQuery and then manipulating it. It's mostly used for behavioral data in online datasets.

It has not impacted our operational costs and productivity much; however, it offers a valuable solution for our use case.

BigQuery's querying capabilities are very optimized for large datasets. It generally works faster, making it effective for large data analytics projects.

It would be beneficial if BigQuery could be made more affordable.

I have been familiar with BigQuery for at least four years, probably around six.

I would rate the stability of BigQuery as seven out of ten.

Scalability is easier with BigQuery, and I would rate it as ten out fo ten.

We haven't really needed to use Google's technical support.

Positive

We previously worked with Redshift. We found BigQuery to be the only option for our current use case. Redshift is mostly cheaper, especially if you want to manage your own data warehouse. 

We had some issues with BigQuery, which, when combined with cost, influenced our decision to move back to Redshift as our main data warehouse.

No cloud solution is straightforward. We faced difficulties in configuration, permissions, etc. All cloud providers use their own terminology, and while documented, adapting to their terminology takes time.

We have internal people for maintenance, so we don't pay for additional support.

We are above the free threshold, so we are paying around 40 euros per month for BigQuery. It is generally low cost.

In addition to working with Redshift earlier, we also had integration with Alooma as an ETL solution. However, Alooma doesn't exist anymore.

I would recommend BigQuery to others. However, making it more affordable would be appreciated.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

I use it to deal a lot with marketing, specifically Google Ads, YouTube, and Google Analytics. But mostly, I utilize it for its capabilities to sync directly up with Google ads transfers.

Instead of having to go directly into the platform, pull various reports after and save those reports, port them over into Google Sheets, and then import ranges and queries. Then, having to transform the data to my needs, I can build a SQL script that is to my needs directly within the platform so that when the data comes out at the platform, it's already essentially punched into the format that I needed.

Its SQL editor is very easy to use and very easy to conceptualize. The way that it breaks data down into silos is easily discernible. So, I guess that's really it.

There is a good amount of documentation out there, but they're consistently making changes to the platform, and, like, their literature hasn't been updated on some plans.

I have been using BigQuery for a little over a year.

It's pretty stable. It's fast, and it is able to go through large quantities of data pretty quickly.

I think that it's easy to scale. For instance, when I need the data for a new client, I just ask to have their account added to my MCC, and the MCC deploys through basically, rolls out all the accounts available really quickly.

I am the sole user of the solution in my company.

I've tried getting in touch with the support, and that's actually the difficult part. So, unless you're using a higher-tiered version of the platform, getting support can be problematic.

I got into Google Big Query since it met my needs.

Regarding the deployment model, I work in its native GUI. I'm not sure what the SaaS version is, so I just utilize it with Google Cloud's native console.

Regarding the deployment process, I would have to create your own instance within Google Cloud. You create a project, that project. Then, you start nesting your data streams into that project. And then we do have to backfill some of the data because it'll only start grabbing data from the date that you tell it to in thirty days before. So if you need data that is previous to thirty days, then you've got it going to backfill it. After that, I found that it was a pretty easy and quick deployment.

Speaking about the time for deployment, I would say that having the knowledge I have now, it wouldn't take me even an afternoon. But at the time, because I didn't know what I was doing, it took about two-three days.

I did the deployment myself.

Price-wise, I think that is very reasonable. Like, I don't use a ton of computing when it comes to the platform, so I haven't ever really had to pay when it comes to the product. I really don't have to pay from month to month.

I did not go through other solutions.

I would tell those planning to use the solution to just go out and utilize as much information as possible. There's a ton of great information on the platform and how it can be best utilized.

The solution doesn't necessarily require maintenance.

It's a great platform. It's pretty easy to use. You do have to have some skill and uptake when it comes to actually writing SQL and writing queries. But then it does need better support capabilities. But aside from that, it's a pretty good platform.

I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

Our company uses the solution as a data warehouse. We have ten to twenty users who consume the solution from reports. 

The feature called calibrating the capacity is valuable.

The solution is easy to use and has quite good performance.

We would like to be able to calibrate the solution to run on top of a raw file. Currently, we have to move raw files from Google storage to the solution and load them for transformation. We shouldn't need to move data first to get an analysis.

I have been using the solution for five years. 

The solution is stable so I rate stability a nine out of ten. 

We have experienced a few glitches in our company only. When we run queries, they take a few to five minutes when they should only take one minute. There is a problem with the services in Indonesia. 

The solution is scalable and has quite good performance. You scale at the same time you execute a user's role and can easily get one to ten million pro. 

I rate scalability a nine out of ten. 

Technical support was quite responsive and handled our issue. 

I rate support an eight out of ten. 

Positive

The setup is quite simple so I rate it a nine out of ten. 

The solution is pretty affordable and quite cheap in comparison to PDP or Cloudera. 

The solution could be less expensive. You have to be careful how you design, query, or partition because it could cost you a lot of money.

I rate pricing an eight out of ten. 

When we decided to move to the cloud, we compared the solution to KWS. We found that the performance of Google Cloud and the solution were better than KWS. The setup and configuration were also simpler.

I rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

We use BigQuery to store data in a table and query it. Data storage can be either an internal native table or an external table where the external source will point to Google Cloud Storage or Google Drive. 

Wherever we can have external storage, we can have a table built pointing to that external storage and query the tables. In BigQuery, we can query the table or even do DML operations, like insert, delete, etc.

The main thing I like about BigQuery is storage. We did an on-premise BigQuery migration with trillions of records. Usually, we have to deal with insufficient storage on-premises, but in BigQuery, we don't get that because it's like cloud storage, and we can have any number of records. That is one advantage. 

The next major advantage is the column length. We have some limits on column length on-premises, like 10,000, and we have to design it based on that. However, with BigQuery, we don't need to design the column length at all. It will expand or shrink based on the records it's getting.

I can give you a real-life example based on our migration from on-premises to GCP. There was a dimension table with a general number of records, and when we queried that on-premises, like in Apache Spark or Teradata, it took around half an hour to get those records. In BigQuery, it was instant. As it's very fast, you can get it in two or three minutes. That was very helpful for our engineers.

Usually, we have to run a query on-premises and go for a break while waiting for that query to give us the results. It's not the case with BigQuery because it instantly provides results when we run it. So, that makes the work fast, it helps a lot, and it helps save a lot of time. 

It also has a reasonable performance rate and smart tuning. Suppose we need to perform some joins, BigQuery has a smart tuning option, and it'll tune itself and tell us the best way a query can be done in the backend. 

To be frank, the performance, reliability, and everything else have improved, even the downtime. Usually, on-premise servers have some downtime, but as BigQuery is multiregional, we have storage in three different locations. So, downtime is also not getting impacted.

For example, if the Atlantic ocean location has some downtime, or the server is down, we can use data that is stored in Africa or somewhere else. We have three or four storage locations, and that's the main advantage.

It would be better if BigQuery didn't have huge restrictions. For example, when we migrate from on-premises to on-premise, the data which handles all ebook characters can be handled on-premise. But in BigQuery, we have huge restrictions. If we have some symbols, like a hash or other special characters, it won't accept them. Not in all cases, but it won't accept a few special characters, and when we migrate, we get errors. 

We need to use Regexp or something similar to replace that with another character. This isn't expected from a high-range technology like BigQuery. It has to adapt all products. For instance, if we have a TV Showroom, the TV symbol will be there in the shop name. Teradata and Apache Spark accept this, but BigQuery won't. This is the primary concern that we had.

In the next release, it would be better if the query on the external table also had cache. Right now, we are using a GCS bucket, and in the native table, we have cache. For example, if we query the same table, it won't cost because it will try to fetch the records from the cached result. But when we run queries on the external table a number of times, it won't be cached. That's a major drawback of BigQuery. Only the native table has the cache option, and the external table doesn't. If there is an option to have an external table for cache purposes, it'll be a significant advantage for our organization.

I have been using BigQuery for more than three years.

BigQuery is a stable solution.

BigQuery is highly scalable. We can have unlimited storage if we do 20 records, and It's very fast. Even if we scale it to 20 trillion, it will still be fast. 

In my organization, about two in five use BigQuery. When I joined the company a year back, usage was relatively moderate. However, now usage increased because of the on-premise to GCP migration. Because of many successful projects, several people are using BigQuery now.

We have dedicated support people who help us with the framework. If there is a technical issue in BigQuery, we just get help from the technical team. But if there are any engineering issues or some data issues, our team will handle them.

I use Teradata and then Apache Spark on-premises.

The initial setup is relatively straightforward. There are some restrictions, like the project's name. It has to be unique, but once that project is created, we can simply go to an option, query, and the query control will open, and we can start creating a table, loading data, querying, and everything. So that's quite simple and straightforward.

When I joined PayPal, the setup was done in-house. When I worked at another organization, Cognizant, we had Google's help. So a Google specialist helped us set up and everything.

I have tried my own setup using my Gmail ID, and I think it had a $300 limit for free for a new user. That's what Google is offering, and we can register and create a project.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give BigQuery an eight.

BigQuery has got a lot of traditional functionalities. You can store the data. You can process the data.

In Teradata, it's very fast compared to BigQuery. The processing capability and inbuilt MPP architecture support processing millions or billions of records in a few seconds. BigQuery faces challenges in processing and retrieving the same data.

So, the processing capability can be an area of improvement. 

Another area of improvement is in terms of the storage area, as BigQuery does support some limited types of data storage file format. In order to see the data, we need to store the data in a relational database. So, in the future, they should be capable of querying the data from the data lake. 

Before storing it in the RDBMS. At the moment, they don't have this feature for how my raw data looks unless you store the data in tables. Never know what sort of data. 

That's one thing, like, definitely they need to improve because before we model the data to explore what kind of data I'm getting in the raw stage then it's easy to, like model and process the data.

It supports petabytes of data like Teradata. One advantage of using BigQuery is that it's cloud-based. You don't need additional space or nodes to process growing data. It's auto-scalable, eliminating the need to plan and expand infrastructure as your organization's data grows.

We never had any major issues. However, when comparing technical support between Teradata and BigQuery, Teradata has a larger global support team. BigQuery has comparatively less support from the company to the customer.

We haven't experienced major issues or outages, so it's always available. It's multi-region, and if one server goes down, another server in that region takes over.

Positive

BigQuery can be used for any type of company. It has the capability of building applications and storing data. It can be used for OLTP or OLAP. It has many other products within the Google space.

Teradata, on the other hand, mainly focuses on building databases, storing and processing SysTrack data. BigQuery is an analytical platform where you can store and process data, and Google Cloud Platform has different products for other purposes.

You can build your application or organize data, structure, and structure. You can build reporting solutions on the Google Cloud Platform itself. It has everything - storing, processing, integrating, and building solutions, all in one product.

When comparing BigQuery with Azure scenarios, there are differences. It depends on the organization's requirements and use case.

There are two types of pricing: the storage price and the processing price. Storage is very, very cheap compared to Teradata. But processing, it depends, like, how much of an amount of data you are processing. They charge the query you run on the big query.

In terms of the data warehousing, and data analytical platform, BigQuery is one of the products in the Google Cloud platform. So, I would rate it a nine out of ten in terms of data warehousing.  

We primarily use the solution for data analytics. 

I enjoy the scalability of the solution. Its scalability is very impressive.

It's straightforward to set up.

The solution has been stable.

We'd like to have more integrations with other technologies. We'd like something like CrossCloud - something that can be on AWS and Azure and can be easily integrated.

It would be great if they added data anonymization to their list of features. We'd like to see data compliance and masking so we can enforce things region by region.

I've been using the solution since around 2019.

I haven't seen any tickets relating to trouble with scalability. It seems to be reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

The scalability is excellent. It can handle large datasets and scale up pretty easily as the data volume grows. It expands very easily.

We have 80 to 100 people using the solution right now. It's used on a daily basis. 

I haven't used technical support just yet. I haven't come across any problems which would require me to reach out. 

I've used Data Warehouse in the past and am familiar with Teradata and Snowflake.

If I have to compare BigQuery with Teradata in terms of performance, capabilities, ease of use, and integrations, BigQuery scales up better. However, in terms of licensing and paper use, Teradata is quite good.

If we compare it with other things like Snowflake, Snowflake has its own unique architectural advantages. However, I haven't seen Snowflake over on Google Cloud. I have seen Snowflake over on AWS and Azure. The architecture of Snowflake has its own unique advantages and is largely on other clouds.

The initial setup is very simple and straightforward. I'd rate the ease of implementation a four out of five.

We find the pricing reasonable enough for our use cases. However, it's too early to comment on if it will be good in the long run. We have to properly plan data around different tiers, including which to archive where so that we use it in a more optimized fashion. We will need to properly plan everything and we haven't really done that yet.

I'd rate it a four out of five in terms of its competitive pricing. 

I'm an end-user. I'm still new to the company. I'm not sure which version of the solution we're on.

All cloud systems have more or less the same functionality. It's just a matter of choosing one that makes sense for your business.

When it comes to how to leverage analytics, some of the AI and machine learning from Google come ahead of the competition. Other than that, the other analytics options are fairly competitive between Google, AWS, and Microsoft. It's just that,  when it comes to extending the analytics to AI/ML, Google is ahead of the competition there.

I'd recommend the solution to others. 

I would rate it eight out of ten.

We are primarily using the solution to crunch data. Then, we are doing some ETL work on top of the data. 

We like that it is a serverless system. 

We can analyze terabytes of data in a very small amount of time. 

It's similar to a Hadoop cluster, except it's managed by Google.

The initial setup is simple.

We find the product to be very stable.

It scales quite well.

If they can provide any charting platform on top of this product, that would be ideal. BigQuery now only allows us to run queries. It doesn't provide us with any insights. For example, if a query took so many times, they could maybe provide any suggestions on how to optimize the queries or speed up the process. It would be helpful if they could provide some dashboards where you can easily view charts and information. That would be very useful.

I've been using the solution for two or three years. 

This is a highly stable product. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

The solution is very scalable. 

Almost my entire team uses it. We have a 50-member team, and pretty much everyone is on it. They are mostly data engineers and developers. 

We have yet to reach out to technical support. We haven't had any issues. 

We chose this solution specifically since all of our services are in GCP, Google Cloud. Google Cloud has a basic internal coupling with BigQuery. That's the reason we are using BigQuery.

The initial setup is very easy. You just have to log in to the Google Cloud console, and then you can just create a few tables and start using it. 

From start to finish it takes about half an hour. It is even less than that to get the tables up and running. The deployment is quite fast.

I'm not sure about the exact cost, however, it is charged on the queries which you run, basically. For example, if you run a query, the amount of data scanned through BigQuery will dictate the costs. 

I am a customer and end-user.

I'm not sure which version of the solution we're using. 

It's a serverless platform deployed on a public cloud. 

I'd advise potential users to set up their tables accordingly. There are two sets of optimization that BigQuery provides as well. You set up whichever columns you want to do the partition and on which columns you want to do the clustering. If these columns are defined properly, then BigQuery's a breeze to use.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate it at an eight. If they just added a few more features, it would be almost perfect.