New Codelab: hellodashboard

[Andy "Rufus" Rothfusz]

Have you ever wanted to create a dashboard for your big data but didn't know where to start? We've just published a very basic dashboard sample as a codelab: the 'BigQuery Dashboard Codelab' or 'hellodashboard.' Once you've completed the lab, you'll have a basic framework for calling not only the BigQuery API but many other Google APIs.

https://developers.google.com/bigquery/articles/dashboard

Your coding begins right after you've installed the Python development kit for Google App Engine on your machine and run the most basic 'Hello World' application. It ends with a big query across every birth in the USA between 1990 and 2005, creating an interactive graphical map on a dashboard, all in less than 200 lines of code.

As a codelab, the text walks you through a lot of explanations about the code, what each part does, and how to get more detailed information. But it only covers enough to get running. By the time you're done, you'll hopefully be inspired to create your own dashboards for your own data. For your own data, you could extend the sample to add features like these:

• re-run only if the tables have changed
• cache data from the query to improve time and cost efficiency
• restrict dashboard access to just your users
• cache auth credentials so users don't get access directly to your tables

I hope you enjoy the 'BigQuery Dashboard Codelab' and that it helps you get over any initial hesitation to write your own dashboards. BigQuery is so simple to use, once you have the basic framework for authentication and authorization and a few simple calls through the API library, you'll soon be adapting the code to show off your own data. Please post any questions or suggestions to bigquery-discuss. 

/Rufus