Google is integrating its BigQuery web service with Google Apps Script and Google Spreadsheets. BigQuery enables developers to use Google’s infrastructure to run SQL-like queries on very large datasets. By combining BigQuery with Apps Script and Spreadsheets, users will now be able visualize big data. Unfortunately BigQuery is still in a preview stage, with access limited to a few test users. However, when this stuff hits the public it could go a long way towards the democratization of big data.
“Assuming it does what it says on the label, this opens up a lot of technology problems to bootstrapped startups that previously required serious funding to tackle,” big data expert and frequent ReadWriteWeb contributor Pete Warden told us when BigQuery and the Prediction API were first announced at Google IO last summer.
For more information on BigQuery, check out Rohit Garg’s First look at Google BigQuery. Garg explains how it works and what some of the limitations are.
Google also recently updatedGoogle Refine, a tool for cleaning up messy datasets. Together BigQuery, Prediction API and Refine could make a powerful toolset for big data analysis.
