Introduction to INFORMATION_SCHEMA

BigQuery INFORMATION_SCHEMA views let you retrieve metadata about your BigQuery objects. You can query these read-only, system-defined views to analyze resources like datasets, jobs, and access control.

In BigQuery, you query INFORMATION_SCHEMA views using GoogleSQL by specifying a scope and a view. For example, to get metadata for tables in a dataset, you specify myDataset.INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES.

The following table lists the available views:

Resource type	INFORMATION_SCHEMA View
Access control	`OBJECT_PRIVILEGESscience`
BI Engine	`BI_CAPACITIES` `BI_CAPACITY_CHANGES`
Configurations	`EFFECTIVE_PROJECT_OPTIONS` `ORGANIZATION_OPTIONS` `ORGANIZATION_OPTIONS_CHANGES` `PROJECT_OPTIONS` `PROJECT_OPTIONS_CHANGES`
Datasets	`SCHEMATA SCHEMATA_LINKS SCHEMATA_OPTIONS SHARED_DATASET_USAGE SCHEMATA_REPLICAS SCHEMATA_REPLICAS_BY_FAILOVER_RESERVATION`
Graphs	`PROPERTY_GRAPHS`
Jobs	`JOBS_BY_PROJECT^†` `JOBS_BY_USER` `JOBS_BY_FOLDER` `JOBS_BY_ORGANIZATION`
Jobs by timeslice	`JOBS_TIMELINE_BY_PROJECT^†` `JOBS_TIMELINE_BY_USER` `JOBS_TIMELINE_BY_FOLDER` `JOBS_TIMELINE_BY_ORGANIZATION`
Recommendations and insights	`INSIGHTSscience` `RECOMMENDATIONSscience` `RECOMMENDATIONS_BY_ORGANIZATIONscience`
Reservations	`ASSIGNMENTS_BY_PROJECT^†` `ASSIGNMENT_CHANGES_BY_PROJECT^†` `CAPACITY_COMMITMENTS_BY_PROJECT^†` `CAPACITY_COMMITMENT_CHANGES_BY_PROJECT^†` `RESERVATIONS_BY_PROJECT^†` `RESERVATION_CHANGES_BY_PROJECT^†` `RESERVATIONS_TIMELINE_BY_PROJECT^†`
Routines	`PARAMETERS` `ROUTINES` `ROUTINE_OPTIONS`
Search indexes	`SEARCH_INDEXES` `SEARCH_INDEX_COLUMNS` `SEARCH_INDEX_COLUMN_OPTIONSscience` `SEARCH_INDEX_OPTIONS` `SEARCH_INDEXES_BY_ORGANIZATION`
Sessions	`SESSIONS_BY_PROJECT^†` `SESSIONS_BY_USER`
Streaming	`STREAMING_TIMELINE_BY_PROJECT^†` `STREAMING_TIMELINE_BY_FOLDER` `STREAMING_TIMELINE_BY_ORGANIZATION`
Tables	`COLUMNS` `COLUMN_FIELD_PATHS` `CONSTRAINT_COLUMN_USAGE` `KEY_COLUMN_USAGE` `PARTITIONSscience` `TABLES` `TABLE_OPTIONS` `TABLE_CONSTRAINTS` `TABLE_SNAPSHOTS` `TABLE_STORAGE_BY_PROJECT^†` `TABLE_STORAGE_BY_FOLDER` `TABLE_STORAGE_BY_ORGANIZATION` `TABLE_STORAGE_USAGE_TIMELINEscience` `TABLE_STORAGE_USAGE_TIMELINE_BY_FOLDERscience` `TABLE_STORAGE_USAGE_TIMELINE_BY_ORGANIZATIONscience`
Vector indexes	`VECTOR_INDEXES` `VECTOR_INDEX_COLUMNS` `VECTOR_INDEX_OPTIONS`
Views	`VIEWS` `MATERIALIZED_VIEWS`
Write API	`WRITE_API_TIMELINE_BY_PROJECT^†` `WRITE_API_TIMELINE_BY_FOLDER` `WRITE_API_TIMELINE_BY_ORGANIZATION`

^† For *BY_PROJECT views, the BY_PROJECT suffix is optional. For example, querying INFORMATION_SCHEMA.JOBS_BY_PROJECT and INFORMATION_SCHEMA.JOBS return the same results.

Pricing

For projects that use on-demand pricing, queries against INFORMATION_SCHEMA views incur a minimum of 10 MB of data processing charges, even if the bytes processed by the query are less than 10 MB. 10 MB is the minimum billing amount for on-demand queries. For more information, see On-demand pricing.

For projects that use capacity-based pricing, queries against INFORMATION_SCHEMA views and tables consume your purchased BigQuery slots. For more information, see capacity-based pricing.

Because INFORMATION_SCHEMA queries are not cached, you are charged each time that you run an INFORMATION_SCHEMA query, even if the query text is the same each time you run it.

You are not charged storage fees for the INFORMATION_SCHEMA views.

Syntax

An INFORMATION_SCHEMA view needs to be qualified with a dataset or region.

Note: You must specify a location to query an INFORMATION_SCHEMA view. Querying an INFORMATION_SCHEMA view fails with the following error if the location of the query execution doesn't match the location of the dataset or regional qualifier used:

Table myproject: region-us.INFORMATION_SCHEMA.[VIEW] not found in location US

Dataset qualifier

When present, a dataset qualifier restricts results to the specified dataset. For example:

-- Returns metadata for tables in a single dataset.
SELECT * FROM myDataset.INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES;

The following INFORMATION_SCHEMA views support dataset qualifiers:

COLUMNS
COLUMN_FIELD_PATHS
MATERIALIZED_VIEWS
PARAMETERS
PARTITIONS
ROUTINES
ROUTINE_OPTIONS
TABLES
TABLE_OPTIONS
VIEWS

Region qualifier

Region qualifiers are represented using a region-REGION syntax. Any dataset location name can be used for REGION. For example, the following region qualifiers are valid:

region-us
region-asia-east2
region-europe-north1

When present, a region qualifier restricts results to the specified location. Region qualifiers aren't hierarchical, which means the EU multi-region does not include europe-* regions nor does the US multi-region include the us-* regions. For example, the following query returns metadata for all datasets in the US multi-region for the project in which the query is executing, but doesn't include datasets in the us-west1 region:

-- Returns metadata for all datasets in the US multi-region.
SELECT * FROM region-us.INFORMATION_SCHEMA.SCHEMATA;

The following INFORMATION_SCHEMA views don't support region qualifiers:

If neither a region qualifier nor a dataset qualifier is specified, you will receive an error.

Queries against a region-qualified INFORMATION_SCHEMA view run in the region that you specify, which means that you can't write a single query to join data from views in different regions. To combine INFORMATION_SCHEMA views from multiple regions, read and combine the query results locally, or copy the resulting tables to a common region.

Project qualifier

When present, a project qualifier restricts results to the specified project. For example:

-- Returns metadata for the specified project and region.
SELECT * FROM myProject.`region-us`.INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES;

-- Returns metadata for the specified project and dataset.
SELECT * FROM myProject.myDataset.INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES;

All INFORMATION_SCHEMA views support project qualifiers. If a project qualifier is not specified, the view will default to the project in which the query is executing.

Specifying a project qualifier for organization-level views (for example, STREAMING_TIMELINE_BY_ORGANIZATION) has no impact on the results.

Limitations

BigQuery INFORMATION_SCHEMA queries must be in GoogleSQL syntax. INFORMATION_SCHEMA does not support legacy SQL.
INFORMATION_SCHEMA query results are not cached.
INFORMATION_SCHEMA views cannot be used in DDL statements.
INFORMATION_SCHEMA views don't contain information about hidden datasets.
INFORMATION_SCHEMA queries with region qualifiers might include metadata from resources in that region from deleted datasets that are within your time travel window.
When you list resources from an INFORMATION_SCHEMA view, the permissions are checked only at the parent level, not at an individual row level. Therefore, any deny policy (preview) that conditionally targets an individual row using tags is ignored.