Google BigQuery is an industry-leading, fully-managed cloud data warehouse that lets you store and analyze petabytes of data in no time.

RudderStack supports Google BigQuery as a source from which you can ingest data and route it to your desired downstream destinations.

Granting permissions

RudderStack requires you to grant certain user permissions on your BigQuery warehouse to successfully access data from it.

Perform the following steps in the exact order to grant these permissions:

Step 1: Creating a role and granting permissions

1. Go to the Roles section of Google Cloud Platform dashboard and click CREATE ROLE.

2. Fill in the details as shown:

3. Click ADD PERMISSIONS and add the following permissions:

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bigquery.datasets.get
bigquery.jobs.create
bigquery.jobs.list
bigquery.tables.create
bigquery.tables.get
bigquery.tables.getData
bigquery.tables.list
bigquery.tables.update
bigquery.tables.updateData

4. Finally, click CREATE.

Step 2: Creating a service account and attaching the role to it

1. Go to Service Accounts and select the project which has the dataset or the table that you want to use.
2. Click CREATE SERVICE ACCOUNT.

3. Fill in the Service Account details as shown below, and click CREATE AND CONTINUE:

4. Fill in the Role details as shown below, and click CONTINUE:

5. Click DONE to move to the list of service accounts.

Step 3: Creating and downloading the JSON key

1. Click the three dots icon under Actions in the service account that you just created and select Manage keys, as shown:

2. Click ADD KEY, followed by Create new key, as shown:

3. Select JSON and click CREATE.

A JSON file will be downloaded on your system. This file is required while creating a BigQuery warehouse source in RudderStack, explained further in this document.

Step 4: Creating the RudderStack schema and granting permissions

1. From your BigQuery SQL workspace, run the following command to create a dedicated schema rudderstack_.

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create schema rudderstack_;

2. Grant full access to the rudderstack_ schema for the RudderStack service account you created above. Replace <SERVICE_ACCOUNT_ID> with the service account ID you specified in Step 2: Creating a service account and attaching role to it.

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GRANT `roles/bigquery.dataOwner`
     ON SCHEMA rudderstack_
     TO "serviceAccount:<SERVICE_ACCOUNT_ID>";

Setting up the BigQuery source in RudderStack

To set up BigQuery as a source in RudderStack, follow these steps:

Naming the source

1. Log into your RudderStack dashboard.
2. From the left navigation bar, go to Source > New Source > Reverse ETL. Then, select BigQuery, as shown:

3. Assign a name to your source.

Configuring the connection credentials

1. Choose the relevant option from Table or Model to use the source to sync data from either a warehouse table or a model.

2. Enter the relevant settings in the Connection Credentials section as listed below:

• Credentials - Enter the GCP Service Account credentials JSON.
• Project ID - Enter the project_id from the GCP Service Account credentials JSON.
• Service account - Enter the client_email from the GCP Service Account credentials JSON.

3. Click Continue to verify your credentials. RudderStack will then verify and validate your credentials.

4. Once verified, click Continue to proceed.

Schedule settings

1. Specify the Schedule Settings to schedule the data syncs from your BigQuery instance.

2. After specifying the schedule type and run settings, click Continue to finish the setup.

BigQuery is now successfully configured as a source in your RudderStack dashboard. You can further connect this source to your preferred destination by clicking on Add Destination button, as shown:

Specifying the data to import

While connecting a destination to your Reverse ETL source, you can use the default JSON mapping or the Visual Data Mapping feature.

FAQ

What is the difference between the Table and Model options when creating a Reverse ETL source?

When creating a new Reverse ETL source, you are presented with the following two options from which RudderStack will sync the data:

• When you choose Table, RudderStack imports all the data associated with the specified table during the sync.
• When you choose Model, RudderStack imports the data by running the query specified in the connected model, during the sync.

What do the three validations under Verifying Credentials imply?

When setting up a Reverse ETL source, once you proceed after entering the connection credentials, you will see the following three validations under the Verifying Credentials option:

These options are explained below:

• Verifying Connection: This option indicates that RudderStack is trying to connect to the warehouse with the information specified in the connection credentials.

• Able to List Schema: This option checks if RudderStack is able to fetch all the schema details using the provided credentials.
• Able to Access RudderStack Schema: This option implies that RudderStack is able to access the rudderstack_ schema that you have created by successfully running all the commands in the Creating the RudderStack schema and granting permissions section.