Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Version History
About once a quarter BigQuery launches a new version with new
functionality. The history of BigQuery major releases follows:
•
May 2010
: BigQuery prototype launched to Trusted testers at Google
I/O. At this point, BigQuery provided only a synchronous interface for
querying data stored in Google Cloud Storage.
•
May 2012
: Version 1.0. BigQuery launched to the public at Google I/O
2012. This release included the current HTTP API. This release had
asynchronous query and job execution and included the principal
abstractions of Project, Dataset, and Tables.
•
June 2012
: Billing added. After this, users actually had to pay to use
BigQuery.
•
August 2012
: Version 1.1. Batch queries added along with a Microsoft
Excel connector.
•
October 2012
: Version 1.2 Imports via JSON added as well as from
AppEngine Datastore backups. Querying and manipulation of nested
and repeated fields also added.
•
March 2013
: Version 1.3. Added the ability to join two large tables and
removed limits on distinct elements for
GROUP BY
operations.
Timestamp data type also added.
•
June 2013
: Version 1.4. Support for large query results. Also analytic
and windowing functions added.
•
September 2013
: Version 1.5. Streaming ingestion added to the API.
Table decorators also released.
•
March 2014
: Version 1.6. Table views, table wildcards, and partitioned
export were all added. Streaming ingestion limits were raised by two
orders of magnitude. A number of query improvements such as support
for multi-
JOIN
were also made.
We mention this history to show the rapid evolution of the BigQuery service.
Although queries and API calls that were written for BigQuery version 1.0
would still work today, many of the limitations of the service have been
removed. For example, BigQuery used to support only
JOIN
operations
where one of the tables was smaller than 8 MB. Now, BigQuery can join
