4 BigQuery Metadata SQL Queries To Save You Time, Money & Sanity
Never write another schema, save on storage costs and more.
One of my first significant projects at work was using BigQuery metadata to automate the auditing and deletion of SQL tables, which ultimately resulted in five-figure annual savings for my employer.
After months of digging through table schemas, activity logs and other metrics, I’ve gained significant experience querying and understanding how to leverage SQL to unlock the power of metadata.
If you work in BigQuery or a similar cloud platform, you’re doing yourself a huge disservice if you haven’t taken the time to understand what metadata GCP is storing on your behalf.
Metadata queries, while an admittedly unsexy concept, offer a path toward optimization that manual work simply can’t achieve.
Early in my career, I realized that metadata isn't just "data about data"—it's the footprint of your entire infrastructure. After reflecting on my frequent metadata use cases, I’ve compiled code snippets of the queries I use most to save me hours of manual digging and allow me to optimize processes for performance and cost efficiency.
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