Grace O.
Sample Guardrails should be standard
We now set maximum bytes billed on all analyst accounts. Simple advice that every team should follow.
BigQuery SQL for analysts: fast answers, small bills
Write efficient GoogleSQL in BigQuery, work with nested GA4 style data, and keep query costs predictable with partitions, clustering and guardrails
Created by Aiko Tanaka
- Updated September 2026
- English
- Intermediate
What you will learn
- Estimate how much data a query will scan before running it
- Design and query partitioned and clustered tables efficiently
- Work with ARRAY and STRUCT columns using UNNEST correctly
- Answer common questions from GA4 export data in SQL
- Use QUALIFY, window functions and approximate functions at scale
- Set guardrails and monitor query costs across a project
Course content
How BigQuery runs and bills your queries
Nested and repeated data
- Video: ARRAY and STRUCT explained 10 min
- Video: UNNEST without exploding your counts 12 min
- Article: Correlated subqueries over arrays 9 min
- Video: JSON columns and JSON functions 9 min
Analysing GA4 export data
- Video: The GA4 export schema 11 min
- Article: Extracting event parameters 10 min
- Video: Sessions, users and engagement 12 min
- Video: A simple funnel from GA4 events 10 min
Efficient analytical SQL
- Article: Window functions at scale 10 min
- Video: Approximate aggregation 9 min
- Video: Joins that do not blow up 10 min
- Article: Reusable logic with UDFs and views 9 min
Building tables other analysts can use
- Video: Creating tables with CREATE TABLE AS SELECT 9 min
- Video: MERGE for incremental updates 11 min
- Article: Descriptions, labels and access 8 min
Guardrails and monitoring
- Video: Maximum bytes billed and dry runs 9 min
- Video: Monitoring costs with INFORMATION_SCHEMA 11 min
- Article: Scheduled queries and summary tables 10 min
- Video: Sharing results with Looker Studio and Sheets 9 min
- Quiz: Final check 6 min
Requirements
- Comfortable with SQL joins, GROUP BY and basic window functions
- A Google account to use the free BigQuery sandbox
Description
BigQuery makes it easy to query billions of rows. It also makes it easy to run a query that scans far more data than you needed and lands on someone's invoice. This course teaches analysts to write GoogleSQL that is both correct and economical.
What you will learn
- How BigQuery stores and scans data, and what you are billed for
- Partitioned and clustered tables, and how to make queries use them
- Nested and repeated fields: ARRAY, STRUCT and UNNEST without row explosions
- Querying Google Analytics 4 export data, a common real world schema
- Window functions, QUALIFY and approximate aggregation at scale
- Guardrails: dry runs, maximum bytes billed, and monitoring with INFORMATION_SCHEMA
How the course works
You can follow everything in the free BigQuery sandbox using public datasets, so you do not need a billing account to practise. Each lesson pairs a business question with a query, and every query is shown with the amount of data it processes so you build an instinct for cost.
The course assumes you already know standard SQL. If you are comfortable with joins and GROUP BY in any database, you will be fine.
Who this course is for
- Analysts who query BigQuery daily and want lower costs
- Marketing and product analysts working with GA4 export data
- Teams moving reporting from another database to BigQuery
Instructor
Aiko Tanaka
Analytics lead teaching SQL that answers business questions, from first SELECT to window functions
- 4.4 instructor rating
- 23 reviews
- 6,830 students
- 3 courses
- Sample
I have spent most of my career turning vague questions into queries: which customers came back, where the funnel leaks, why revenue looks different in two reports. SQL is the tool I reach for first, and I teach it the way analysts actually use it.
My courses use realistic datasets with messy edges: duplicates, missing values, time zones and late data. You will learn to check your own results, explain a query to a colleague and keep cloud warehouse costs under control.
I write every exercise so it runs on free tools, PostgreSQL, DuckDB or the BigQuery sandbox, so you never need a company account to practise.
Student reviews
Julia N.
Sample Cut our BigQuery bill noticeably
The INFORMATION_SCHEMA lesson found a dashboard scanning a big table every few minutes. Fixing it paid for this course many times.
Mohammed A.
Sample GA4 section is excellent
Extracting event parameters always confused me. The scalar subquery pattern made it clean and readable.
Anika R.
Sample UNNEST finally makes sense
The example where order counts doubled after unnesting is exactly the mistake I made last month.
Sophie T.
Sample Practical and clear
Great on partitioning and UNNEST. I would have liked a bit more on capacity pricing, since our company uses editions.
Luca B.
Sample Good for people coming from PostgreSQL
The GoogleSQL differences lesson saved me a lot of small errors in my first weeks.
Pedro S.
Sample Useful but quite focused on GA4
Content is accurate. I do not use GA4, so one section was less relevant for me.
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