As of this week, Google BigQuery is offering Big Data developers new ways to work with data by adding two new features.

Introduced in limited preview in November 2011 and made publicly available May 1, 2012, BigQuery is Google's chosen way to "bring Big Data analytics to all businesses via the cloud."



Writing on the official Google Enterprise blog, Ju-kay Kwek, Product Manager for Google BigQuery, announced the features as follows:

"Today, we’re giving you new ways to work with your data by adding two new features to BigQuery.

Batch Queries

While BigQuery specializes in getting insights quickly, we understand that there are important, non-interactive queries, such as nightly reports, that businesses also need to run. Now, you can designate a query as a batch query and it will complete within a few hours.If you’re using BigQuery via our standard self-service model, you pay 2 cents per GB processed for batch queries and 3.5 cents per GB processed for interactive queries.

BigQuery Connector for Excel

Analysts and executives use spreadsheets to explore large data sets. Last year, we launched the ability for BigQuery users to execute queries inside Google spreadsheets using the Google Apps Script integration. With the new BigQuery Connector for Excel, we’re now making it simpler to execute BigQuery queries using Microsoft^® Excel. This connector takes advantage of Excel’s standard web query feature to eliminate the extra work of manually importing data and running queries directly within Excel. For instructions on how to download and use the connector, see the BigQuery Connector for Excel page.

If you haven’t gotten started with Google BigQuery yet, you can sign up here."

As its tagline suggests, Google BigQuery allows one to "analyze terabytes of data with just a click of a button." Last month, BigQuery integrated several partner solutions, making it easier to import data from other cloud and on-premise solutions and visualize data with rich interactive dashboards.