BigQuery

You can connect your BigQuery database to Altertable to query and analyze your data.

Prerequisites

Before connecting BigQuery to Altertable, you'll need to configure your Google Cloud project:

1. Enable the BigQuery API

Enable the BigQuery API within your Google Cloud project.

2. Check Organization Policies

Ensure your organization doesn't have the constraints/iam.disableServiceAccountKeyCreation policy enforced:

# Check at project level
gcloud resource-manager org-policies describe constraints/iam.disableServiceAccountKeyCreation --project=PROJECT_ID

# Or check at organization level
gcloud resource-manager org-policies describe constraints/iam.disableServiceAccountKeyCreation --organization=ORG_ID

If enforced, you can disable it with:

gcloud resource-manager org-policies disable-enforce constraints/iam.disableServiceAccountKeyCreation --project=PROJECT_ID

3. Create a Service Account

Create a service account (learn how to create and download a service account key) and grant it the following three roles:

• roles/bigquery.dataViewer
• roles/bigquery.jobUser
• roles/bigquery.readSessionUser

If you cannot grant the roles, ensure your admin user has the orgpolicy.policyAdmin role:

gcloud organizations add-iam-policy-binding ORG_ID \
  --member="user:YOUR_ADMIN_USER_EMAIL" \
  --role="roles/orgpolicy.policyAdmin"

Grant missing roles with:

gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding PROJECT_ID \
  --member="serviceAccount:SERVICE_ACCOUNT_NAME@PROJECT_ID.iam.gserviceaccount.com" \
  --role="THE_MISSING_ROLE"

Validate the roles with:

gcloud projects get-iam-policy PROJECT_ID \
  --flatten="bindings[].members" \
  --filter="bindings.members:serviceAccount:SERVICE_ACCOUNT_NAME@PROJECT_ID.iam.gserviceaccount.com" \
  --format="table(bindings.role)"

Connecting to Altertable

To add a new BigQuery connection:

1. Navigate to the Connections section in the dashboard
2. Click New connection
3. Select BigQuery as the engine
4. Fill in the connection details:
   • Name: A descriptive name for your connection
   • Service Account Credentials: Upload your service account JSON key file
5. Click Save Connection

Once connected, you can start querying your BigQuery database through Altertable's SQL engine.