A quick walkthrough BigQuery Remote Functions

In a previous post, I mentioned Remote Functions—a powerful way to send data from BigQuery to an external service for processing, including a Cloud Run function.

This is especially useful when SQL lacks built-in support for your specific needs, and writing a UDF isn’t an option (for example, if you need a highly specialized Python function).

Before building your own, check out bigfunctions—many common use cases have already been solved by others!

What are remote functions in BigQuery?

These are a special type of function that delegates processing of input to an external resource, allowing us to:

• send data from BigQuery to Google Cloud Functions or other external services

• process it using a programming language

• return results to our query

Why is that important?

A Google Remote function can encapsulate any kind of logic in major programming languages.

This opens the door to vast a ecosystem of libraries such at the Python packages.

Let’s look at a step-by-step example of creating a Remote Function.

Step 1: Create the Cloud Run Function

Step 2: Create a connection

Step 3: Set up permissions

Step 4: Bind the connection with Cloud Run function

Test run

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