Get List of Tables/Views and Schema in BigQuery

Raymond Raymond event 2021-03-13 visibility 27,357
more_vert

BigQuery provides system views to get a list of tables and views in a certain dataset. 

__TABLES__

The following query retrieves all the tables and views in dataset named `test`:

SELECT * FROM `test`.__TABLES__;
The results looks similar to something below:
2021031353332-image.png
The information returned includes:
  • Project ID
  • Dataset ID
  • Object creation time
  • Last modification time
  • Record count (for tables)
  • Size in bytes (for tables)
  • Type: 1 - table; 2- View

Retrieve object schema

Sometimes it is useful to retrieve the schema information of an object in BigQuery.

There are system views can be used to retrieve metadata information.

Retrieve table and view list

SELECT * FROM test.INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES

The results looks similar to the following screenshot:

2021031354126-image.png

Retrieve table schema

The following query returns the schema metadata of table dim_customer in dataset test.

SELECT * EXCEPT(table_catalog) FROM test.INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS
WHERE table_name='dim_customer' AND table_schema='test';

The output shows all the columns in table test.dim_customer:

2021031354536-image.png

References

Getting table metadata using INFORMATION_SCHEMA  |  BigQuery (google.com)

More from Kontext
comment Comments
No comments yet.

Please log in or register to comment.

account_circle Log in person_add Register

Log in with external accounts