Introduction to Cloud BigTable

Lab Details:

1. This lab walks you through BigTable, how it is different from BigQuery.

2. You will be creating a BigTable Cluster and Table.

3. Region: us-central1

4. Duration: 60 minutes

What is BigTable?

Bigtable is a distributed database that runs on clusters for applications that has massive data. Its mainly designed for unstructured data, and scales horizontally.

Cloud Bigtable is not a relational database system. It stores data in key-value pairs.

When to choose BigTable and BigQuery?

• For Interactive querying in an online analytical processing system use BigQuery.

• BigQuery is a data warehouse application, and it stores data in structured tables.

• BigQuery supports SQL queries whereas BigTable doesn't support SQL queries.

• BigTable is not a recommended solution for a small volume of data(< 1 TB).

• BigTable is characteristic of a NoSQL system whereas BigQuery is somewhat of a hybrid where it is mainly used for SQL queries but it does support NoSQL as well.

• For e.g. If you want to do analytics or business intelligence from collected data from different sources into one location i.e BigQuery.

• Simple, Database - BigTable whereas Analytics - BigQuery

Lab Tasks:

1. Login into GCP Console.

2. Creating BigTable Instance.

3. Creating a BigTable Cluster.

4. Create a Table.

5. Create a Column Family.

6. Inserting data into Table.

7. Reading data through the Table.