A signal from the dead sector
First lesson: Вход в Дальний архив
Interactive course · BigQuery
You already write SQL.
BigQuery works differently.
Not another "SQL from scratch" course but a walk through the differences: arrays and structs right in a cell, windows with QUALIFY, day shards, partitions instead of indexes, and a bill for the bytes you read. Queries run inside the lesson — no Google Cloud account, no billing.
- queries inside the lesson
- no Google Cloud account
- an exam and a certificate at the end
-- a resident’s tags live in the cell itself SELECT name, ARRAY_LENGTH(tags) FROM fa_users
Артём 3 Кир 1 Лада 0
The same query, a different bill
One line of DDL cuts the scan a thousandfold. You will learn to see it before you run.
The offer
What is different from Postgres here
Six habits you will have to change. Each gets a lesson with live queries — not a retelling of the docs, but a walk-through on the archive data.
Three scenes
What this actually looks like
The three differences that break the habit hardest — drawn rather than described: a row is no longer flat, tables come one per day, and a filter now costs money.
A cell holds a list
An array and a struct live right inside the row. No link table and no JOIN for three tags — but you now need UNNEST, and it can silently drop rows.
One table per day
Journals are sharded by date right in the table name. A wildcard reads them in one query, and the _TABLE_SUFFIX filter decides how many days you pay for.
There are no indexes
Partitions and clustering take their place. A well-written WHERE does not speed the query up — it physically cuts out data you then never pay for.
How it works
A course where the queries actually run
The query — right on the page
Every live cell executes against a real BigQuery-dialect engine on the archive data. No Google Cloud account, no billing, nothing to install.
The delta, not a retelling
No lesson re-explains what you already know from Postgres. Each answers one question: what works differently here, and what it will cost you.
The bill as part of the syntax
In BigQuery the price of a query is a property of it, alongside the result. The course teaches reading that price before you run, not from the invoice.
The Far Archive · the last Earth colony
A signal that was not noise
A weak signal came out of the dead sector — and turned out to be a warehouse: orders, payments, terminal logs and telemetry of a colony that kept its journal to the last day. The dialect is foreign, the station’s power counter is finite, and QUERY, your companion, does not know this language either and learns it alongside you.
- 02four time types instead of one
- 03the row that stopped being flat
- 05a 500 ₽ bill for one forgotten line
- 06seven hundred tables in one query
- 08the last session: power for one query
The route
Three steps of the transfer, then the exam
The program is built like a transfer: first the different syntax and its price, then the depth of the dialect, then scale — and the case closes with queries.
The transfer
The new archive's syntax, money and error language
Depth
Arrays, structs, windows — the reason you came
Scale
Money, partitions, shards and writing data
The exam
The case closes with queries, not with retelling
The program
Eight chapters of the Far Archive
The transfer
2 chapters · 9 lessons · 1 h 38 minThe new archive's syntax, money and error language
Другой диалект
You will learn to address tables, read the price of a query before running it, and speak the language of BigQuery errors.
Типы, строки и время
You will sort out a type system with no SERIAL, money in NUMERIC, re2 regexes, and four time types instead of one.
Depth
2 chapters · 9 lessons · 1 h 52 minArrays, structs, windows — the reason you came
Массивы и структуры
You will stop assuming a row is flat: lists and records live in the cell, and UNNEST expands them without losing rows.
Агрегаты и окна по-новому
You will write aggregates and windows idiomatically: COUNTIF over CASE, QUALIFY over a subquery, an honest window frame.
Scale
3 chapters · 8 lessons · 1 h 32 minMoney, partitions, shards and writing data
Деньги и масштаб
You will design a table so the same query reads a thousand times less — and verify that before you run it.
Шарды, wildcard и GA4
You will read seven hundred daily tables in one query, build an end-to-end GA4 report, and pull data out of schemaless JSON.
Меняем данные и автоматизируем
You will write to the warehouse without OLTP reflexes: batches instead of row-by-row edits, MERGE instead of ON CONFLICT, scripts instead of plpgsql.
The exam
1 chapter · 1 lesson · 25 minThe case closes with queries, not with retelling
Экзамен Дальнего архива
You will gather every delta into one migrant cheat sheet and close the case with eight tasks that cannot be copied.
What you keep
More than chapters you have read
Idioms, not recipes
QUALIFY instead of a subquery, UNNEST without losing rows, MERGE instead of ON CONFLICT — what separates a migrant from someone at home in the dialect.
The delta map
The final lesson gathers every difference into one table: Postgres habit on the left, BigQuery idiom on the right. People keep it open for months.
The exam and the certificate
Eight HARD and EXPERT tasks, auto-graded on live data: copying will not pass. Six of eight to clear it — and a personal certificate.
The archive is open. The query is yours.
The first chapter is free and needs nothing but a browser: no Google Cloud account, no billing, no install. Open the lesson and run queries against the archive right on the page.
The average lesson takes 12 minutes