[LASER SOUNDS]
SPEAKER: Whether you're exploring
a data set for the first time or summarizing
the findings of your analysis to an audience,
you can use data visualization to make large, complex data
sets easier to understand and internalize.
On this episode of BigQuery Spotlight,
it's all about visualizing your BigQuery data.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Data visualization is a tool that
helps you turn your complex data into compelling stories,
unlocking the insights that both you and your audience
need to steer decision-making.
Using dashboards or infographics, for example,
can help spark and guide discussion
while the group explores the data together.
However, data visualization is not just
for communicating with decision makers.
It is also an important part of the exploratory analysis phase.
Seeing data in visual form helps you, as an analyst,
identify patterns, outliers, trends,
or other interesting data points you
want to investigate further.
Choosing a data visualization tool
comes down to understanding your needs.
First, consider your use case.
Are you performing basic data visualization and reporting?
Or more advanced tasks, such as data modeling?
Secondly, you'll want to balance the cost
of the tool against its feature set and its learning curve.
Fortunately, BigQuery is connected
with several visualization tools,
including those across the partner ecosystem.
So there's sure to be one that's right for you.
Today, we'll introduce two of these tools, Data Studio
and Connected Sheets.
Both give you the ability to create quick, ad hoc data
visualizations, as well as dashboards and reports.
Let's take a closer look at each one.
First up, Data Studio, Google's business intelligence and data
visualization platform that lets you build scalable,
serverless interactive dashboards.
Data Studio has two main components.
The first, Explorer, is a place for you
to quickly derive insights from your data
during the exploratory phase of data analysis.
It can be accessed directly from BigQuery.
Just click Explorer in Data Studio from your query results
page.
Data Studio will automatically launch and create
a direct connection to the query results.
You'll land in the Explorer interface, where
you can create quick visualizations through drag
and drop functionality.
On the back end, Data Studio is creating SQL queries
in BigQuery to support your exploration in real time.
In fact, you can also use Explorer with a BigQuery
table itself, rather than query results,
which means you don't need to write any SQL at all.
Just select the table and click Export,
and choose Explorer in Data Studio.
The visuals you create in Explorer
can be exported into the Reports component of Data Studio.
Data Studio Reports provides a canvas
for bringing together visuals into a dashboard, report,
or infographic.
They're easy to share, embed, and publish.
Plus, you can make them interactive for your viewer
by adding an option to filter, or select a date range directly
in the live report.
Data Studio is a great pick if you want power with flexibility
and don't mind taking a little bit of time
to get to know a new tool.
Plus, it's available for free.
If you're looking to wipe away the learning curve pretty much
completely for you and your collaborators,
you can do so with a second tool, Connected Sheets.
Connected Sheets allows you to analyze and visualize
your BigQuery data, up to billions of rows,
directly in a Google Sheet.
So if you're a user of Spreadsheets,
you already know all you need to know.
You can access Connected Sheets right
from your BigQuery table or your query results
by clicking Explore with Sheets.
This will open up a new Google Sheet
with a tab that has a direct connection
to the full big query table.
Your Connected Sheet shows a preview
of the table, which can be explored
by sorting and filtering.
You can also reference the connected Sheets in charts,
pivot tables, and functions, which
then use the entire BigQuery table in its calculations.
In order to support these functions,
Connected Sheets runs queries in BigQuery on your behalf.
You can manually request the query to run by hitting Apply.
Results of those queries are saved in your spreadsheet
for analysis and sharing.
You can also schedule data to refresh automatically.
A quick note on availability.
Connected Sheets is a feature available only
for G Suite Enterprise, Enterprise for Education,
and Drive Enterprise account customers.
I also want to mention Looker--
a data platform which is now part of Google Cloud.
We recommend taking a closer look at this tool,
especially if you're seeking an enterprise-ready solution that
delivers business intelligence capabilities, powers
operational workflows with data, and enables organizations
to build their own data applications.
There's a lot to learn in the field of data visualization.
As you gain experience, you can learn
to create more effective visuals,
use them to tell compelling stories,
and fine tune your design skills.
And we hope that the data visualization
tool will be just that--
a tool, and not any additional mountain to climb.
Try out Data Studio and Connected
Sheets from your own BigQuery sandbox project.
You can connect one of your own tables
or even a table from the BigQuery public data sets
program.
For a refresher on how to set up your own sandbox
and access our public data sets, follow the link
in the description below.
If you want to learn more about BigQuery,
check out the rest of our playlist.
And don't forget to subscribe to our channel
on YouTube for other great content.
Look out for our next episode of BigQuery Spotlight.
And remember, stay curious.