18 KiB
BigQuery ETL
Bigquery UDFs and SQL queries for building derived datasets.
The bqetl
CLI
The bqetl
command-line tool aims to simplify working with the bigquery-etl repository by supporting
common workflows, such as creating, validating and scheduling queries or adding new UDFs.
bqetl
can be installed by running pip install mozilla-bigquery-etl
or by cloning the repository
and running pip install --editable .
Usage
The CLI groups commands into different groups:
$ bqetl --help
Commands:
dag Commands for managing DAGs.
dryrun Dry run SQL.
format Format SQL.
mozfun Commands for managing mozfun UDFs.
query Commands for managing queries.
udf Commands for managing UDFs.
...
To get information about commands and available options, simply append the --help
flag:
$ bqetl query create --help
Usage: bqetl query create [OPTIONS] NAME
Create a new query with name <dataset>.<query_name>, for example:
telemetry_derived.asn_aggregates
Options:
-p, --path DIRECTORY Path to directory in which query should be created
-o, --owner TEXT Owner of the query (email address)
-i, --init Create an init.sql file to initialize the table
--help Show this message and exit.
Running some commands, for example to create or query tables, will require access to GCP.
Formatting SQL
We enforce consistent SQL formatting as part of CI. After adding or changing a
query, use script/format_sql
to apply formatting rules.
Directories and files passed as arguments to script/format_sql
will be
formatted in place, with directories recursively searched for files with a
.sql
extension, e.g.:
$ echo 'SELECT 1,2,3' > test.sql
$ script/format_sql test.sql
modified test.sql
1 file(s) modified
$ cat test.sql
SELECT
1,
2,
3
If no arguments are specified the script will read from stdin and write to stdout, e.g.:
$ echo 'SELECT 1,2,3' | script/format_sql
SELECT
1,
2,
3
To turn off sql formatting for a block of SQL, wrap it in format:off
and
format:on
comments, like this:
SELECT
-- format:off
submission_date, sample_id, client_id
-- format:on
Recommended practices
Queries
- Should be defined in files named as
sql/<project>/<dataset>/<table>_<version>/query.sql
e.g.<project>
defines both where the destination table resides and in which project the query job runssql/moz-fx-data-shared-prod/telemetry_derived/clients_daily_v7/query.sql
- Queries that populate tables should always be named with a version suffix; we assume that future optimizations to the data representation may require schema-incompatible changes such as dropping columns
- May be generated using a python script that prints the query to stdout
- Should save output as
sql/<project>/<dataset>/<table>_<version>/query.sql
as above - Should be named as
sql/<project>/query_type.sql.py
e.g.sql/moz-fx-data-shared-prod/clients_daily.sql.py
- May use options to generate queries for different destination tables e.g.
using
--source telemetry_core_parquet_v3
to generatesql/moz-fx-data-shared-prod/telemetry/core_clients_daily_v1/query.sql
and using--source main_summary_v4
to generatesql/moz-fx-data-shared-prod/telemetry/clients_daily_v7/query.sql
- Should output a header indicating options used e.g.
-- Query generated by: sql/moz-fx-data-shared-prod/clients_daily.sql.py --source telemetry_core_parquet
- Should save output as
- Should not specify a project or dataset in table names to simplify testing
- Should be incremental
- Should filter input tables on partition and clustering columns
- Should use
_
prefix in generated column names not meant for output - Should use
_bits
suffix for any integer column that represents a bit pattern - Should not use
DATETIME
type, due to incompatibility with spark-bigquery-connector - Should read from
*_stable
tables instead of including custom deduplication- Should use the earliest row for each
document_id
bysubmission_timestamp
where filtering duplicates is necessary
- Should use the earliest row for each
- Should escape identifiers that match keywords, even if they aren't reserved keywords
Views
- Should be defined in files named as
sql/<project>/<dataset>/<table>/view.sql
e.g.sql/moz-fx-data-shared-prod/telemetry/core/view.sql
- Views should generally not be named with a version suffix; a view represents a
stable interface for users and whenever possible should maintain compatibility
with existing queries; if the view logic cannot be adapted to changes in underlying
tables, breaking changes must be communicated to
fx-data-dev@mozilla.org
- Views should generally not be named with a version suffix; a view represents a
stable interface for users and whenever possible should maintain compatibility
with existing queries; if the view logic cannot be adapted to changes in underlying
tables, breaking changes must be communicated to
- Must specify project and dataset in all table names
- Should default to using the
moz-fx-data-shared-prod
project; thescripts/publish_views
tooling can handle parsing the definitions to publish to other projects such asderived-datasets
- Should default to using the
UDFs
- Should limit the number of expression subqueries to avoid:
BigQuery error in query operation: Resources exceeded during query execution: Not enough resources for query planning - too many subqueries or query is too complex.
- Should be used to avoid code duplication
- Must be named in files with lower snake case names ending in
.sql
e.g.mode_last.sql
- Each file must only define effectively private helper functions and one
public function which must be defined last
- Helper functions must not conflict with function names in other files
- SQL UDFs must be defined in the
udf/
directory and JS UDFs must be defined in theudf_js
directory- The
udf_legacy/
directory is an exception which must only contain compatibility functions for queries migrated from Athena/Presto.
- The
- Each file must only define effectively private helper functions and one
public function which must be defined last
- Functions must be defined as persistent UDFs
using
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION
syntax- Function names must be prefixed with a dataset of
<dir_name>.
so, for example, all functions inudf/*.sql
are part of theudf
dataset- The final syntax for creating a function in a file will look like
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION <dir_name>.<file_name>
- The final syntax for creating a function in a file will look like
- We provide tooling in
scripts/publish_persistent_udfs
for publishing these UDFs to BigQuery- Changes made to UDFs need to be published manually in order for the dry run CI task to pass
- Function names must be prefixed with a dataset of
- Should use
SQL
overjs
for performance
Backfills
- Should be avoided on large tables
- Backfills may double storage cost for a table for 90 days by moving
data from long-term storage to short-term storage
- For example regenerating
clients_last_seen_v1
from scratch would cost about $1600 for the query and about $6800 for data moved to short-term storage
- For example regenerating
- Should combine multiple backfills happening around the same time
- Should delay column deletes until the next other backfill
- Should use
NULL
for new data andEXCEPT
to exclude from views until dropped
- Should use
- Backfills may double storage cost for a table for 90 days by moving
data from long-term storage to short-term storage
- Should use copy operations in append mode to change column order
- Copy operations do not allow changing partitioning, changing clustering, or column deletes
- Should split backfilling into queries that finish in minutes not hours
- May use script/generate_incremental_table to automate backfilling incremental queries
- May be performed in a single query for smaller tables that do not depend on history
- A useful pattern is to have the only reference to
@submission_date
be a clauseWHERE (@submission_date IS NULL OR @submission_date = submission_date)
which allows recreating all dates by passing--parameter=submission_date:DATE:NULL
- A useful pattern is to have the only reference to
Incremental Queries
Benefits
- BigQuery billing discounts for destination table partitions not modified in the last 90 days
- May use dags.utils.gcp.bigquery_etl_query to simplify airflow configuration e.g. see dags.main_summary.exact_mau28_by_dimensions
- May use script/generate_incremental_table to automate backfilling
- Should use
WRITE_TRUNCATE
mode orbq query --replace
to replace partitions atomically to prevent duplicate data - Will have tooling to generate an optimized mostly materialized view that only calculates the most recent partition
Properties
- Must accept a date via
@submission_date
query parameter- Must output a column named
submission_date
matching the query parameter
- Must output a column named
- Must produce similar results when run multiple times
- Should produce identical results when run multiple times
- May depend on the previous partition
- If using previous partition, must include an
init.sql
query to initialize the table, e.g.sql/moz-fx-data-shared-prod/telemetry_derived/clients_last_seen_v1/init.sql
- Should be impacted by values from a finite number of preceding partitions
- This allows for backfilling in chunks instead of serially for all time and limiting backfills to a certain number of days following updated data
- For example
sql/moz-fx-data-shared-prod/clients_last_seen_v1.sql
can be run serially on any 28 day period and the last day will be the same whether or not the partition preceding the first day was missing because values are only impacted by 27 preceding days
- If using previous partition, must include an
Query Metadata
- For each query, a
metadata.yaml
file should be created in the same directory - This file contains a description, owners and labels. As an example:
friendly_name: SSL Ratios
description: >
Percentages of page loads Firefox users have performed that were
conducted over SSL broken down by country.
owners:
- example@mozilla.com
labels:
application: firefox
incremental: true # incremental queries add data to existing tables
schedule: daily # scheduled in Airflow to run daily
public_json: true
public_bigquery: true
review_bug: 1414839 # Bugzilla bug ID of data review
incremental_export: false # non-incremental JSON export writes all data to a single location
Publishing Datasets
- To make query results publicly available, the
public_bigquery
flag must be set inmetadata.yaml
- Tables will get published in the
mozilla-public-data
GCP project which is accessible by everyone, also external users
- Tables will get published in the
- To make query results publicly available as JSON,
public_json
flag must be set inmetadata.yaml
- Data will be accessible under https://public-data.telemetry.mozilla.org
- A list of all available datasets is published under https://public-data.telemetry.mozilla.org/all-datasets.json
- For example: https://public-data.telemetry.mozilla.org/api/v1/tables/telemetry_derived/ssl_ratios/v1/files/000000000000.json
- Output JSON files have a maximum size of 1GB, data can be split up into multiple files (
000000000000.json
,000000000001.json
, ...) incremental_export
controls how data should be exported as JSON:false
: all data of the source table gets exported to a single locationtrue
: only data that matches thesubmission_date
parameter is exported as JSON to a separate directory for this date
- Data will be accessible under https://public-data.telemetry.mozilla.org
- For each dataset, a
metadata.json
gets published listing all available files, for example: https://public-data.telemetry.mozilla.org/api/v1/tables/telemetry_derived/ssl_ratios/v1/files/metadata.json - The timestamp when the dataset was last updated is recorded in
last_updated
, e.g.: https://public-data.telemetry.mozilla.org/api/v1/tables/telemetry_derived/ssl_ratios/v1/last_updated
Scheduling Queries in Airflow
- bigquery-etl has tooling to automatically generate Airflow DAGs for scheduling queries
- To be scheduled, a query must be assigned to a DAG that is specified in
dags.yaml
- New DAGs can be configured in
dags.yaml
, e.g., by adding the following:
bqetl_ssl_ratios: # name of the DAG; must start with bqetl_ schedule_interval: 0 2 * * * # query schedule default_args: owner: example@mozilla.com start_date: '2020-04-05' # YYYY-MM-DD email: ['example@mozilla.com'] retries: 2 # number of retries if the query execution fails retry_delay: 30m
- All DAG names need to have
bqetl_
as prefix. schedule_interval
is either defined as a CRON expression or alternatively as one of the following CRON presets:once
,hourly
,daily
,weekly
,monthly
start_date
defines the first date for which the query should be executed- Airflow will not automatically backfill older dates if
start_date
is set in the past, backfilling can be done via the Airflow web interface
- Airflow will not automatically backfill older dates if
email
lists email addresses alerts should be sent to in case of failures when running the query
- New DAGs can be configured in
- Alternatively, new DAGs can also be created via the
bqetl
CLI by runningbqetl dag create bqetl_ssl_ratios --schedule_interval='0 2 * * *' --owner="example@mozilla.com" --start_date="2020-04-05"
- To schedule a specific query, add a
metadata.yaml
file that includes ascheduling
section, for example:friendly_name: SSL ratios # ... more metadata, see Query Metadata section above scheduling: dag_name: bqetl_ssl_ratios
- Additional scheduling options:
depends_on_past
keeps query from getting executed if the previous schedule for the query hasn't succeededdate_partition_parameter
- by default set tosubmission_date
; can be set tonull
if query doesn't write to a partitioned tableparameters
specifies a list of query parameters, e.g.["n_clients:INT64:500"]
arguments
- a list of arguments passed when running the query, for example:["--append_table"]
referenced_tables
- manually curated list of tables the query depends on; used to speed up the DAG generation process or to specify tables that the dry run doesn't have permissions to access, e. g.[['telemetry_stable', 'main_v4']]
multipart
indicates whether a query is split over multiple filespart1.sql
,part2.sql
, ...allow_field_addition_on_date
: date for which new fields are allowed to be added to the existing destination table query results are written todepends_on
defines external dependencies in telemetry-airflow that are not detected automatically:
depends_on: - task_id: external_task dag_name: external_dag execution_delta: 1h
task_id
: name of task query depends ondag_name
: name of the DAG the external task is part ofexecution_delta
: time difference between theschedule_intervals
of the external DAG and the DAG the query is part ofdestination_table
: The table to write to. If unspecified, defaults to the query destination; if None, no destination table is used (the query is simply run as-is). Note that if no destination table is specified, you will need to specify thesubmission_date
parameter manually
- Additional scheduling options:
- Queries can also be scheduled using the
bqetl
CLI:bqetl query schedule path/to/query_v1 --dag bqetl_ssl_ratios
- To generate all Airflow DAGs run
./script/generate_airflow_dags
orbqetl dag generate
- Generated DAGs are located in the
dags/
directory - Dependencies between queries scheduled in bigquery-etl and dependencies to stable tables are detected automatically
- Generated DAGs are located in the
- Specific DAGs can be generated by running
bqetl dag generate bqetl_ssl_ratios
- Generated DAGs will be automatically detected and scheduled by Airflow
- It might take up to 10 minutes for new DAGs and updates to show up in the Airflow UI
Contributing
When adding or modifying a query in this repository, make your changes in the sql/
directory.
When adding a new library to the Python requirements, first add the library to
the requirements and then add any meta-dependencies into constraints.
Constraints are discovered by installing requirements into a fresh virtual
environment. A dependency should be added to either requirements.txt
or
constraints.txt
, but not both.
# Create and activate a python virtual environment.
python3 -m venv venv/
source venv/bin/activate
# If not installed:
pip install pip-tools
# Add the dependency to requirements.in e.g. Jinja2.
echo Jinja2==2.11.1 >> requirements.in
# Compile hashes for new dependencies.
pip-compile --generate-hashes requirements.in
# Deactivate the python virtual environment.
deactivate