Use the BigQuery advanced runtime

This document describes how to enable and disable the BigQuery advanced runtime, and how to evaluate the advanced runtime's effects on your query performance.

The advanced runtime provides the BigQuery query processor with enhanced vectorization. Enhanced vectorization expands vectorized query execution by applying it to key aspects of query processing, such as filter evaluation in BigQuery storage, specialized data encodings, and optimization techniques.

Roles and permissions

To get the permissions that you need to specify a configuration setting, ask your administrator to grant you the BigQuery Admin (roles/bigquery.admin) IAM role on your project . For more information about granting roles, see Manage access to projects, folders, and organizations.

You might also be able to get the required permissions through custom roles or other predefined roles.

Enable the advanced runtime

To enable the advanced runtime for your project, use the ALTER PROJECT statement to change the default configuration. In the statement, set the query_runtime argument to 'advanced'. For example:

ALTER PROJECT PROJECT_NAME
SET OPTIONS (
  `region-LOCATION.query_runtime` = 'advanced'
);

Replace the following:

  • PROJECT_NAME: the name of the project
  • LOCATION: the location of the project

It can take several minutes for the change to take effect.

Once you've enabled the advanced runtime, qualifying queries in the project use the advanced runtime regardless of which user created the query job.

Disable the advanced runtime

To disable the advanced runtime for your project, use the ALTER PROJECT statement to change the default configuration. In the statement, set the query_runtime argument to NULL. For example:

ALTER PROJECT PROJECT_NAME
SET OPTIONS (
  `region-LOCATION.query_runtime` = NULL
);

Replace the following:

  • PROJECT_NAME: the name of the project
  • LOCATION: the location of the project

It can take several minutes for the change to take effect.

Evaluate query performance

You can use the administrative job explorer and INFORMATION_SCHEMA views to evaluate the effect of the advanced runtime on query execution time and slot usage.

Follow these steps to evaluate query performance with and without the advanced runtime enabled:

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

    Go to BigQuery

  2. Open a new tab in the query editor.

  3. Disable the use of cached query results for that query tab.

  4. Type or copy your test queries into the query tab.

  5. Run your test queries a few times to establish baseline performance. After each run, determine the query performance metrics as follows:

    1. View the query execution details in the administrative job explorer.

    2. Retrieve job performance data from the INFORMATION_SCHEMA.JOBS_BY_USER view by running the following query in a new query tab:

      SELECT
    job_id,
    end_time - start_time AS duration,
    total_slot_ms,
    query
FROM
  `region-us`.INFORMATION_SCHEMA.JOBS_BY_USER
WHERE
    creation_time > TIMESTAMP_SUB(CURRENT_TIMESTAMP(), INTERVAL 7 DAY)
    AND job_type='QUERY'
    AND total_slot_ms IS NOT NULL
ORDER BY
    creation_time DESC,
    query ASC
LIMIT 1000;

  6. Enable the advanced runtime.

  7. Repeat Step 5.

  8. Compare the query latency and slot usage metrics for the test queries from before and after you enabled the advanced runtime.