Managing Temporary Tables in BigQuery

Temporary tables are a powerful tool in BigQuery that allow you to store data temporarily for use in queries. They are useful for storing intermediate results, such as the results of a join operation, or for storing data that is only needed for a short period of time. In this article, we'll look at how to manage temporary tables in BigQuery.

Creating Temporary Tables in BigQuery

Creating a temporary table in BigQuery is easy. All you need to do is use the CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE statement. This statement takes two arguments - the name of the table and the definition of the table. The definition of the table is a SQL query that defines the columns and data types of the table.

CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE my_temp_table AS
SELECT col1, col2, col3
FROM my_table

This statement will create a temporary table called my_temp_table with the columns col1, col2, and col3. The data in the table will be the same as the data in my_table.

Managing Temporary Tables in BigQuery

Once you have created a temporary table, you can manage it in the same way as any other table. You can query the table, update the data, and delete the table when you are done with it. You can also use the ALTER TABLE statement to add or remove columns from the table.

ALTER TABLE my_temp_table
ADD COLUMN col4 INT

This statement will add a new column called col4 to the table.

Deleting Temporary Tables in BigQuery

When you are done with a temporary table, you can delete it using the DROP TABLE statement. This statement takes one argument - the name of the table to be deleted.

DROP TABLE my_temp_table

This statement will delete the temporary table my_temp_table.

Additional Info about Managing Temporary Tables in BigQuery

Temporary tables are a powerful tool in BigQuery that allow you to store data temporarily for use in queries. They are useful for storing intermediate results, such as the results of a join operation, or for storing data that is only needed for a short period of time. Managing temporary tables in BigQuery is easy, and can be done using the CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE, ALTER TABLE, and DROP TABLE statements.

If you want to learn more about managing temporary tables in BigQuery, you can check out the official documentation here.