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⇱ Create Reports from BigQuery Data in Looker Studio

Create Reports from BigQuery Data in Looker Studio

👁 Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Use CData Connect AI to gain access to live BigQuery data and create custom reports in Looker Studio.

Looker Studio, formerly known as Google Data Studio, empowers users to craft customized reports featuring data visualizations that can be shared with clients while reflecting your brand identity. When combined with CData Connect AI, you gain immediate cloud-to-cloud access to BigQuery data to create visualizations, dashboards, and more. This article provides step-by-step instructions on establishing a virtual database for BigQuery and generating reports from BigQuery data within Looker Studio.

CData Connect AI offers a seamless cloud-to-cloud interface tailored for BigQuery, making it straightforward to construct reports directly from live BigQuery data within Looker Studio without the need for data replication. As you create visualizations, Looker Studio generates queries to retrieve data. With its inherent optimized data processing capabilities, CData Connect AI efficiently channels all supported query operations, including filters, JOINs, and more, directly to BigQuery. This leverages server-side processing to swiftly provide the requested BigQuery data.

About BigQuery Data Integration

CData simplifies access and integration of live Google BigQuery data. Our customers leverage CData connectivity to:

  • Simplify access to BigQuery with broad out-of-the-box support for authentication schemes, including OAuth, OAuth JWT, and GCP Instance.
  • Enhance data workflows with Bi-directional data access between BigQuery and other applications.
  • Perform key BigQuery actions like starting, retrieving, and canceling jobs; deleting tables; or insert job loads through SQL stored procedures.

Most CData customers are using Google BigQuery as their data warehouse and so use CData solutions to migrate business data from separate sources into BigQuery for comprehensive analytics. Other customers use our connectivity to analyze and report on their Google BigQuery data, with many customers using both solutions.

For more details on how CData enhances your Google BigQuery experience, check out our blog post: https://www.cdata.com/blog/what-is-bigquery


Getting Started


This article requires a CData Connect AI instance and the CData Connect AI Connector for Looker Studio. Get more information on the CData Connect AI and sign up for a free trial at https://www.cdata.com/cloud.


Configure BigQuery Connectivity for Looker Studio

Connectivity to BigQuery from Looker Studio is made possible through CData Connect AI. To work with BigQuery data from Looker Studio, we start by creating and configuring a BigQuery connection.

  1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
    2. 👁 Adding a Connection
  2. Select "BigQuery" from the Add Connection panel
    3. 👁 Selecting a data source
  3. BigQuery uses OAuth to authenticate. Click "Sign in" to authenticate with BigQuery. 👁 Authenticating with OAuth (Salesforce is shown).
  4. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add BigQuery Connection page and update the User-based permissions. 👁 Updating permissions

With the connection configured, you are ready to connect to BigQuery data from Looker Studio.

Visualize Live BigQuery Data from Looker Studio

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect AI from Looker Studio to create a new BigQuery data source and build a simple visualization from the data.

  1. Log into Looker Studio, click data sources, create a new data source, and choose CData Connect AI Connector.
    2. 👁 Create a new connection in Looker Studio
  2. Click Authorize and allow access to your Google account. 👁 Granting permissions to the Connector
  3. Click Authorize to authenticate with your CData Connect AI instance 👁 Authenticating with CData Connect AI
  4. In the CData Connect AI Connector in Looker Studio select Connections to import from the dropdown and click Next
    5. 👁 Importing from Connections
  5. Now select a Connection (e.g. GoogleBigQuery1) and click Next 👁 Selecting a Connection
  6. Select a Table (e.g. Orders) or use a Custom Query and click Connect to continue 👁 Selecting a Table
  7. If needed, modify columns, click Create Report, and add the data source to the report.
    8. 👁 Configuring column definitions
  8. Select a visualization style and add it to the report.
  9. Select Dimensions and Measures to customize your visualization.
    10. 👁 Visualizing BigQuery data in Looker Studio

Live Access to BigQuery Data from Cloud Applications

Now you have a direct, cloud-to-cloud connection to live BigQuery data from your Looker Studio workbook. You can create more data sources and new visualizations, build reports, and more — all without replicating BigQuery data.

Try CData Connect AI and get real-time data access to hundreds of SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications.