Google announced today that it has added a couple of new features to BigQuery, its Big Data analysis service. It now supports batch queries, and has a connector for Excel.
“While BigQuery specializes in getting insights quickly, we understand that there are important, non-interactive queries, such as nightly reports, that businesses also need to run,” says product manager Ju-kay Kwek. “Now, you can designate a query as a batch query and it will complete within a few hours. “If you’re using BigQuery via our standard self-service model, you pay 2 cents per GB processed for batch queries and 3.5 cents per GB processed for interactive queries.”
“Analysts and executives use spreadsheets to explore large data sets,” adds Kwek. “Last year, we launched the ability for BigQuery users to execute queries inside Google spreadsheets using the Google Apps Script integration. With the new BigQuery Connector for Excel, we’re now making it simpler to execute BigQuery queries using Microsoft® Excel. This connector takes advantage of Excel’s standard web query feature to eliminate the extra work of manually importing data and running queries directly within Excel. For instructions on how to download and use the connector, see the BigQuery Connector for Excel page.”
Ryan Boyd, Developer Advocate for Cloud Data Services has more on using the new features on Google’s Developers Blog.