Chapter 1: Introduction to Google’s BI Enhancements

In the realm of Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence, the speed at which users receive query results is crucial. Slow responses can lead to frustration, especially when building dashboards. To address this issue, Google has introduced the BI Engine integrated with BigQuery.

The BigQuery BI Engine is a rapid in-memory analytics service that delivers query results in less than a second, utilizing high levels of parallelism. By linking Data Studio to a BigQuery table managed through the BI Engine, users can expedite reports and exploratory data analysis. Data Studio offers up to 1 GB of free capacity within the BI Engine. Moreover, this functionality is compatible with other tools such as Looker, Tableau, or Qlik.

Chapter 2: New Features for Enhanced BI Engine Integration

Google has recently rolled out significant enhancements to make the BI Engine even more appealing to customers.

First, the new preferred tables feature allows users to limit BI Engine acceleration to select tables, while queries to other tables will use standard BigQuery slots. This means businesses can focus on optimizing the performance of tables and dashboards that are critical to their operations. From experience, I can attest that larger tables often hold the most value; enhancing their performance can greatly improve user satisfaction, whereas smaller tables may not require the same level of acceleration and could lead to unnecessary costs.

Second, Google has increased the reservation limits for the BI Engine. The maximum reservation for BigQuery BI Engine has been raised from 100 GB to 250 GB per project, available to all customers. Users can adjust this limit via the Google Cloud Console or through DDL statements:

ALTER BI_CAPACITY <PROJECT_ID>.region-<REGION>.default SET OPTIONS(size_gb = 250);

This change complements the preferred tables feature, enabling larger tables to benefit from acceleration, which is often essential for performance.

With these updates, the integration between BigQuery and Data Studio—as well as other BI tools—has substantially improved. Users should appreciate these enhancements, as no one enjoys waiting long for results. Such improvements are likely to boost the adoption of these solutions within organizations.

Video: What's new in business intelligence for today's GenAI world

This video outlines the latest developments in business intelligence, highlighting how modern solutions are evolving in a GenAI landscape.

Video: Empowering the Data Driven Business with Modern Business Intelligence

This presentation focuses on how contemporary business intelligence tools empower organizations to harness data effectively for informed decision-making.

In conclusion, the recent updates to BigQuery, including support for query queues, enhancements in data security, and improved storage read API quotas, signify Google’s commitment to advancing its Data Warehouse capabilities.