Analyze data with Gemini assistance

This tutorial describes how you can use AI-powered assistance in Gemini in BigQuery to analyze data.

For the example in this tutorial, consider that you're a data analyst who needs to analyze and predict product sales from a dataset.

This tutorial assumes that you're familiar with SQL and basic data analytics tasks. Knowledge of Google Cloud products is not assumed. If you're new to BigQuery, see the BigQuery quickstarts.

Objectives

Use Gemini in BigQuery to answer questions about how BigQuery handles specific data analysis tasks.
Prompt Gemini in BigQuery to find datasets, and to explain and generate SQL queries.
Build a machine learning (ML) model to forecast future periods.

Costs

This tutorial uses the following billable Google Cloud products:

To estimate your costs based on your projected usage, use the pricing calculator.

Before you begin

In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.

Note: If you don't plan to keep the resources that you create in this procedure, create a project instead of selecting an existing project. After you finish these steps, you can delete the project, removing all resources associated with the project.

Go to project selector
Ensure that Gemini in BigQuery is set up for your Google Cloud project.
In the Google Cloud console, go to the BigQuery page.

Go to BigQuery
Create a dataset that's named bqml_tutorial. You use the dataset to store database objects, including tables and models.
To turn on the Gemini in BigQuery features that you need to complete this tutorial, in the BigQuery toolbar, click pen_spark Gemini, and then select the following options:
- Auto-completion
- Auto-generation
- Explanation

Learn about BigQuery capabilities

Before you get started, consider that you want to learn more about how BigQuery handles data querying. To get help, you can send Gemini in BigQuery a natural language statement (or prompt) like the following:

"How do I get started with BigQuery?"
"What are the benefits of using BigQuery for data analysis?"
"How does BigQuery handle auto-scaling for queries?"

Gemini in BigQuery can also provide information about how to analyze your data. For that type of help, you might send prompts such as the following:

"How do I create a time series forecasting model in BigQuery?"
"How do I load different types of data into BigQuery?"

Access and analyze data

Gemini in BigQuery can help you know what data you can access for analysis, and how to analyze that data.

For this example, consider that you need help with the following:

Finding sales dataset and tables to analyze.
Knowing how data tables and queries are related in a sales dataset.
Understanding complex queries and writing queries that use the dataset.

Find data

Before you can query data, you need to know what data you can access. Every data product organizes and stores data differently.

To get help, you can send Gemini in BigQuery a prompt like "How do I learn which datasets and tables are available to me in BigQuery?"

In the Google Cloud console, go to the BigQuery page.

Go to BigQuery
In the Google Cloud console toolbar, click spark Open or close Gemini AI chat.
In the Gemini pane, enter the prompt How do I learn which datasets and tables are available to me in BigQuery?.
Click send Send prompt.

Learn how and when Gemini for Google Cloud uses your data.

The response includes several ways to list projects, datasets, or tables within a dataset.
Optional: To reset your chat history, in the Gemini pane, click delete Clear chat, and then click Reset chat.

Note: The chat history state is kept in memory only and doesn't persist when you switch to another workspace or when you close the Google Cloud console.

Understand and write SQL in BigQuery

For this example, assume that you selected data to analyze and now want to query that data. Gemini in BigQuery can help you work with SQL—whether it's to help you understand queries that are complex and difficult to parse, or to generate new SQL queries.

Prompt for Gemini assistance to explain SQL queries

Consider that you want to understand a complex query that someone else wrote. Gemini in BigQuery can explain the query in plain language—such as the query syntax, underlying schema, and business context.

In the Google Cloud console, go to the BigQuery page.

Go to BigQuery

In the query editor, open or paste the query that you want explained. For example:

SELECT
  u.id AS user_id,
  u.first_name,
  u.last_name,
  avg(oi.sale_price) AS avg_sale_price
FROM `bigquery-public-data.thelook_ecommerce.users` AS u
JOIN `bigquery-public-data.thelook_ecommerce.order_items` AS oi
  ON u.id = oi.user_id
GROUP BY 1, 2, 3
ORDER BY avg_sale_price DESC
LIMIT 10

Highlight the query, and then click auto_awesome Explain this selected query.

In the Gemini pane, a response is returned that's similar to the following:

The intent of this query is to find the top 10 users by average sale price.
The query first joins the users and order_items tables on the user_id
column. It then groups the results by user_id, first_name, and last_name,
and calculates the average sale price for each group. The results are then
ordered by average sale price in descending order, and the top 10 results
are returned.

Generate a SQL query that groups sales by day and product

In this example, you want to generate a query that lists your top products for each day. You then use tables in the thelook_ecommerce dataset and prompt Gemini in BigQuery to generate a query to calculate sales by order item and by product name.

This type of query is often complex, but using Gemini in BigQuery, you can automatically create a statement. You can provide a prompt to generate a SQL query based on your data's schema. Even if you start with no code, a limited knowledge of the data schema, or only a basic knowledge of SQL syntax, Gemini assistance can suggest one or more SQL statements.

To prompt Gemini in BigQuery to generate a query that lists your top products, follow these steps:

In the Google Cloud console, go to the BigQuery page.

Go to BigQuery
In the navigation menu, click BigQuery Studio.
Click SQL query. The Explorer pane automatically loads the selected database.

In the query editor, enter the following prompt, and then press Enter:

# select the sum of sales by date and product casted to day from bigquery-public-data.thelook_ecommerce.order_items joined with bigquery-public-data.thelook_ecommerce.products

The pound character (#) prompts Gemini in BigQuery to generate SQL. Gemini in BigQuery suggests a SQL query similar to the following:

SELECT
  sum(sale_price),
  DATE(created_at),
  product_id
FROM
  `bigquery-public-data.thelook_ecommerce.order_items`
    AS t1
INNER JOIN `bigquery-public-data.thelook_ecommerce.products` AS t2
  ON t1.product_id = t2.id
GROUP BY 2, 3

To accept the suggested code, click Tab, and then click Run to run the SQL statement. You can also scroll through the suggested SQL and accept specific words suggested in the statement.
In the Query results pane, view the query results.

Build a forecasting model and view results

In this example, you use BigQuery ML to do the following:

Use a trend query to build a forecasting model.
Use Gemini in BigQuery to explain and help you write a query to view results of the forecasting model.

You use the following example query with actual sales, which are used as an input to the model. The query is used as a part of creating the ML model.

To create a forecasting ML model, in the query editor, run the following SQL query:

CREATE MODEL bqml_tutorial.sales_forecasting_model
  OPTIONS (
    MODEL_TYPE = 'ARIMA_PLUS',
    time_series_timestamp_col = 'date_col',
    time_series_data_col = 'total_sales',
    time_series_id_col = 'product_id')
AS
SELECT
  sum(sale_price) AS total_sales,
  DATE(created_at) AS date_col,
  product_id
FROM
  `bigquery-public-data.thelook_ecommerce.order_items`
    AS t1
INNER JOIN `bigquery-public-data.thelook_ecommerce.products` AS t2
  ON t1.product_id = t2.id
GROUP BY 2, 3;

You can use Gemini in BigQuery to help you understand this query.

When the model is created, the Results tab of the Query results pane displays a message that's similar to the following:

Successfully created model named sales_forecasting_model.

In the Gemini pane, enter a prompt for Gemini in BigQuery to help you write a query to get a forecast from the model when it's completed—for example, enter How can I get a forecast in SQL from the model?

Based on the context of the prompt, the response includes an example of an ML model that forecasts sales:
```
SELECT
  *
FROM
  ML.FORECAST(
    MODEL `PROJECT_ID.bqml_tutorial.sales_forecasting_model`,
    STRUCT(
      7 AS horizon,
      0.95 AS confidence_level))
```
In this response, PROJECT_ID is your Google Cloud project.

Note: Gemini in BigQuery uses the context of the chat session to help answer questions in the same session.
In the Gemini pane, copy the SQL query.
In the query editor, run the SQL query.

Clean up

To avoid incurring charges to your Google Cloud account for the resources used in this tutorial, you can delete the Google Cloud project that you created for this tutorial. Alternatively, you can delete the individual resources.

Delete project

In the Google Cloud console, go to the Manage resources page.
Go to Manage resources
In the project list, select the project that you want to delete, and then click Delete.
In the dialog, type the project ID, and then click Shut down to delete the project.

Delete your dataset

Deleting your project removes all datasets and all tables in the project. If you prefer to reuse the project, then you can delete the dataset that you created in this tutorial.

In the Google Cloud console, go to the BigQuery page.

Go to BigQuery
In the navigation menu, select the bqml_tutorial dataset that you created.
To delete the dataset, the table, and all of the data, click Delete dataset.
To confirm deletion, in the Delete dataset dialog, type the name of your dataset (bqml_tutorial), and then click Delete.

What's next

Read Gemini for Google Cloud overview.
Learn about Gemini for Google Cloud quotas and limits.
Learn about locations for Gemini for Google Cloud.