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Get the Report →Connect to Live BigQuery Data in PostGresSQL Interface through CData Connect Cloud
Create a live connection to BigQuery in CData Connect Cloud and connect to your BigQuery data from PostgreSQL.
There are a vast number of PostgreSQL clients available on the Internet. PostgreSQL is a popular interface for data access. When you pair PostgreSQL with CData Connect Cloud, you gain database-like access to live BigQuery data from PostgreSQL. In this article, we walk through the process of connecting to BigQuery data in Connect Cloud and establishing a connection between Connect Cloud and PostgreSQL using a TDS foreign data wrapper (FDW).
CData Connect Cloud provides a pure SQL Server interface for BigQuery, allowing you to query data from BigQuery without replicating the data to a natively supported database. Using optimized data processing out of the box, CData Connect Cloud pushes all supported SQL operations (filters, JOINs, etc.) directly to BigQuery, leveraging server-side processing to return the requested BigQuery data quickly.
About BigQuery Data Integration
CData simplifies access and integration of live Google BigQuery data. Our customers leverage CData connectivity to:
- Simplify access to BigQuery with broad out-of-the-box support for authentication schemes, including OAuth, OAuth JWT, and GCP Instance.
- Enhance data workflows with Bi-directional data access between BigQuery and other applications.
- Perform key BigQuery actions like starting, retrieving, and canceling jobs; deleting tables; or insert job loads through SQL stored procedures.
Most CData customers are using Google BigQuery as their data warehouse and so use CData solutions to migrate business data from separate sources into BigQuery for comprehensive analytics. Other customers use our connectivity to analyze and report on their Google BigQuery data, with many customers using both solutions.
For more details on how CData enhances your Google BigQuery experience, check out our blog post: https://www.cdata.com/blog/what-is-bigquery
Getting Started
Connect to BigQuery in Connect Cloud
CData Connect Cloud uses a straightforward, point-and-click interface to connect to data sources.
- Log into Connect Cloud, click Connections and click Add Connection
- Select "BigQuery" from the Add Connection panel
- BigQuery uses OAuth to authenticate. Click "Sign in" to authenticate with BigQuery.
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Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add BigQuery Connection page and update the User-based permissions.


Add a Personal Access Token
If you are connecting from a service, application, platform, or framework that does not support OAuth authentication, you can create a Personal Access Token (PAT) to use for authentication. Best practices would dictate that you create a separate PAT for each service, to maintain granularity of access.
- Click on your username at the top right of the Connect Cloud app and click User Profile.
- On the User Profile page, scroll down to the Personal Access Tokens section and click Create PAT.
- Give your PAT a name and click Create.
- The personal access token is only visible at creation, so be sure to copy it and store it securely for future use.

Build the TDS Foreign Data Wrapper
The Foreign Data Wrapper can be installed as an extension to PostgreSQL, without recompiling PostgreSQL. The tds_fdw extension is used as an example (https://github.com/tds-fdw/tds_fdw).
- You can clone and build the git repository via something like the following view source:
sudo apt-get install git git clone https://github.com/tds-fdw/tds_fdw.git cd tds_fdw make USE_PGXS=1 sudo make USE_PGXS=1 install
Note: If you have several PostgreSQL versions and you do not want to build for the default one, first locate where the binary for pg_config is, take note of the full path, and then append PG_CONFIG=after USE_PGXS=1 at the make commands. - After you finish the installation, then start the server:
sudo service postgresql start
- Then go inside the Postgres database
psql -h localhost -U postgres -d postgres
Note: Instead of localhost you can put the IP where your PostgreSQL is hosted.
Connect to BigQuery data as a PostgreSQL Database and query the data!
After you have installed the extension, follow the steps below to start executing queries to BigQuery data:
- Log into your database.
- Load the extension for the database:
CREATE EXTENSION tds_fdw;
- Create a server object for BigQuery data:
CREATE SERVER "GoogleBigQuery1" FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER tds_fdw OPTIONS (servername'tds.cdata.com', port '14333', database 'GoogleBigQuery1');
- Configure user mapping with your email and Personal Access Token from your Connect Cloud account:
CREATE USER MAPPING for postgres SERVER "GoogleBigQuery1" OPTIONS (username '[email protected]', password 'your_personal_access_token' );
- Create the local schema:
CREATE SCHEMA "GoogleBigQuery1";
- Create a foreign table in your local database:
#Using a table_name definition: CREATE FOREIGN TABLE "GoogleBigQuery1".Orders ( id varchar, Freight varchar) SERVER "GoogleBigQuery1" OPTIONS(table_name 'GoogleBigQuery.Orders', row_estimate_method 'showplan_all'); #Or using a schema_name and table_name definition: CREATE FOREIGN TABLE "GoogleBigQuery1".Orders ( id varchar, Freight varchar) SERVER "GoogleBigQuery1" OPTIONS (schema_name 'GoogleBigQuery', table_name 'Orders', row_estimate_method 'showplan_all'); #Or using a query definition: CREATE FOREIGN TABLE "GoogleBigQuery1".Orders ( id varchar, Freight varchar) SERVER "GoogleBigQuery1" OPTIONS (query 'SELECT * FROM GoogleBigQuery.Orders', row_estimate_method 'showplan_all'); #Or setting a remote column name: CREATE FOREIGN TABLE "GoogleBigQuery1".Orders ( id varchar, col2 varchar OPTIONS (column_name 'Freight')) SERVER "GoogleBigQuery1" OPTIONS (schema_name 'GoogleBigQuery', table_name 'Orders', row_estimate_method 'showplan_all');
- You can now execute read/write commands to BigQuery:
SELECT id, Freight FROM "GoogleBigQuery1".Orders;
More Information & Free Trial
Now, you have created a simple query from live BigQuery data. For more information on connecting to BigQuery (and more than 100 other data sources), visit the Connect Cloud page. Sign up for a free trial and start working with live BigQuery data in PostgreSQL.