Accessing BigQuery Public Datasets

BigQuery offers a number of legitimately interesting public datasets. It's a snap to explore them in PopSQL.

Choose a Public Dataset

Once you've logged into your Google Cloud account, you'll see a number of datasets under the bigquery-public-data header:

bigquery sample datasets

Connect to BigQuery in PopSQL

If you already have a BigQuery connection in PopSQL, simply select it from the Database Connections dropdown:

manage connections

If you are connecting to BigQuery for the first time in PopSQL, we have a full guide.

If you are totally new to BigQuery, read this guide first.

Explore Your BigQuery Public Dataset in PopSQL

Once connected, open a new query in PopSQL and you can query your public dataset:

SELECT *
FROM `bigquery-public-data.hacker_news.comments`
LIMIT 10;

Note the backticks around the project, database, and table name. Be sure to use a period instead of a colon between the bigquery-public-data and hacker_news.

database icon
Real-time SQL collaboration is here
Get started with PopSQL and BigQuery in minutes