One of my favourite books is “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” by J.K. Rowling. It is a story about the world of magical creatures who get loose in the non-wizard world. It’s also a story that shows how Maj (wizards) and No-Maj (non-wizard) people form a friendship to protect magical creatures. On this mission, the lead No-Maj character discovers a world of magic and falls in love with all the challenges it offers, wishing he was a wizard too.
As a No-Maj myself, my transition from mechanical engineering to the data world was initially filled with challenges. Each time I entered a new data area, I was thinking: “If only I were a wizard”. 😉
When I first started learning about databases (DB) and business intelligence (BI), I had this thought in my head.
As I progressed to machine learning (ML) topics, this thought was again present.
Nowadays, I am trying to manoeuvre through generative AI (GenAI) development, and—you guessed it—this thought is again with me.
Even after gaining experience in DB, BI, and ML, the GenAI area would be more challenging for me if it weren’t for one Google service—BigQuery (BQ).
Do you know why?
Because BigQuery is offering “all-in-one” when it comes to the “DB-BI-ML-GenAI” combination. Or, as Google has announced in one of its webinars, it is covering features “From Data to AI” [1].
And how I thought it should be announced: “Fantastic Beasts of BigQuery”.
On top of my all-time favourite BigQuery feature—BQML—Google has recently implemented additional transformative features, making BQ more similar to an analytical development environment and less to a database environment.
These new features enable data professionals to conduct end-to-end analytical tasks without the need to switch between multiple tools.
With end-to-end tasks, I have in mind performing exploratory data analysis (EDA)…