Query Apache Iceberg data

This document describes how to query data stored in a BigLake table for Apache Iceberg in BigQuery.

Required roles

To query BigLake tables for Apache Iceberg in BigQuery, ensure that the caller of the BigQuery API has the following roles:

  • BigQuery Connection User (roles/bigquery.connectionUser)
  • BigQuery Data Viewer (roles/bigquery.dataViewer)
  • BigQuery User (roles/bigquery.user)

The caller can be your account, a Spark connection service account, or a Cloud resource connection service account. Depending on your permissions, you can grant these roles to yourself or ask your administrator to grant them to you. For more information about granting roles, see Viewing the grantable roles on resources.

To see the exact permissions that are required to query Spark BigLake tables, expand the Required permissions section:

Required permissions

You might also be able to get these permissions with custom roles or other predefined roles.

Query BigLake Iceberg tables in BigQuery

After creating a BigLake Iceberg table in BigQuery, you can query it using GoogleSQL syntax, the same as if it were a standard BigQuery table. For example, SELECT field1, field2 FROM mydataset.my_iceberg_table;.

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