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URL: https://www.cdata.com/kb/tech/bigquery-cloud-redash.rst

⇱ Query, Visualize, and Share live BigQuery Data in Redash

Query, Visualize, and Share live BigQuery Data in Redash

👁 Mohsin Turki
Mohsin Turki
Technical Marketing Engineer
Use CData Connect AI to connect to live BigQuery data in Redash for querying, visualizing, and sharing.

Redash is a collaboration tool that lets you query, visualize, and share your data. When paired with CData Connect AI, Redash gets access to live BigQuery data. This article demonstrates how to connect to BigQuery using Connect AI and work with live BigQuery data in Redash.

CData Connect AI provides a pure SQL Server interface for BigQuery, allowing you to query data from BigQuery without replicating the data to a natively supported database. Using optimized data processing out of the box, CData Connect AI pushes all supported SQL operations (filters, JOINs, etc.) directly to BigQuery, leveraging server-side processing to return the requested BigQuery data quickly.

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


Configure BigQuery Connectivity for Redash

Connectivity to BigQuery from Redash is made possible through CData Connect AI. To work with BigQuery data in Redash, 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

Add a Personal Access Token

When connecting to Connect AI through the REST API, the OData API, or the Virtual SQL Server, a Personal Access Token (PAT) is used to authenticate the connection to Connect AI. It is best practice to create a separate PAT for each service to maintain granularity of access.

  1. Click on the Gear icon () at the top right of the Connect AI app to open the settings page.
  2. On the Settings page, go to the Access Tokens section and click Create PAT.
  3. Give the PAT a name and click Create. 👁 Creating a new PAT
  4. The personal access token is only visible at creation, so be sure to copy it and store it securely for future use.

With the connection configured and a PAT generated, you are ready to connect to BigQuery data from Redash.

Connect to BigQuery from Redash using Connect AI

To establish a connection from Redash to CData Connect AI using the Virtual SQL Server, follow these steps:

  1. Log into Redash.
  2. Click the settings widget on the top right.
  3. Click New Data Source.
  4. Select Microsoft SQL Server as the Data Source Type.
  5. On the configuration tab, set the following properties:
    • Database Name: enter the Connection Name of the CData Connect AI data source you want to connect to (for example, Salesforce1).
    • Server: enter the virtual SQL Server host name (tds.cdata.com)
    • User: enter your CData Connect AI username. This is displayed in the top-right corner of the CData Connect AI interface. For example, [email protected].
    • Password: enter the PAT you generated on the Settings page.
    • Port: enter 14333
    👁 Configuring the connection to Connect AI from Redash.
  6. Click Create.
  7. Click Test Connection to ensure that the connection is configured properly.

You can now work with live BigQuery data in Redash.

Get CData Connect AI

To get live data access to hundreds of SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from Redash, try CData Connect AI today!