When referring to BigQuery in documentation or metadata, is it correct to label it as a database ? If I have to mandatorily classify it under Centralised or Other, what would it be?
I asked Gemini and it responded with:
”BigQuery is a serverless, scalable, and highly performant cloud data warehouse developed by Google Cloud. It allows users to run fast SQL queries on massive datasets by separating data storage and compute resources, and it is part of the Google Cloud Platform for enterprise data warehousing, analytics, and artificial intelligence.”
I would say that BigQuery is a “data warehouse”. I would also say that a “data warehouse” is a class of “database”. When we ask Gemini, “What is a database” … we get:
”A database is an organized collection of information, or data, that is stored and accessed electronically.”
You asked “Is it centralized” … not sure what we mean by that. It is a “managed cloud service” meaning that you have no control (nor concern) with its existence. In practices, it is a set of 1000’s of machines located in a Google data center (a region) replicated over multiple zones within the region. Since Google has many regions, there are many concurrent instances of BigQuery (think one per region).
1 Like
Google cloud computing tool, BigQuery, is a fully managed and serverless data warehouse that considered as data storage and analytics tool.
Hey,
Hope you’re keeping well.
BigQuery is technically a serverless, enterprise data warehouse designed for analytics, not a transactional database like Cloud SQL or Firestore. It uses a columnar storage format and is optimized for large-scale analytical queries rather than real-time transactional workloads. In classification contexts, it’s generally correct to label it as a data warehouse under centralized analytical systems, rather than an OLTP database. If your taxonomy forces a “database” category, you can note it as an analytical database to distinguish it from operational databases.
Thanks and regards,
Taz