Hey everyone, here's the 09/2026 edition! (Apologies for the late post!)

🔤 GoogleSQL Language Features & Functions

• - Filter aggregate function inputs directly with a boolean expression inside function calls.

• - Discover and analyze Cloud Storage files spontaneously without creating persistent object tables.

🧠 AI, Machine Learning & Foundation Models

• - Execute generative AI SQL functions using the Gemini 3.8 Flash model.

• - Run generative AI SQL functions using Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite, 3.6 Flash, and 3.7 Flash models.

• - Identify data segments causing statistically significant changes to a summable metric.

• - Quantify the impact of specific interventions on time series data using native SQL.

• - Compute classification and regression evaluation metrics on any query without a stored model.

• - Calculate statistical correlations between target and metric columns via conversational questions.

• - Ask predictive modeling questions powered by the AI.PREDICT function in conversational analytics.

• - Query and analyze item association rules and market baskets through conversational analytics.

💻 Developer Experience (DX) & BigQuery Tooling

• - Publish BigQuery data agents directly to Gemini Enterprise using Google-managed credentials via Agent Gateway.

• - Enhance schema mapping accuracy across pipelines with automatic BigQuery Graph context.

• - Manage BigQuery Data Transfer Service workflows using Model Context Protocol tools for AI agents.

• - Build BigQuery applications and data pipelines natively using the official Rust client library.

• - Inspect previous execution history for queries and multi-statement queries directly within the results pane.

• - Keep row numbers visible while scrolling horizontally across wide query result tables.

• - Group resources, view timeline metric charts, and filter jobs with status counts in the console.

🗄️ Lakehouse Architecture, Apache Iceberg & Open Data Formats

• - Stream continuous query output directly into Apache Iceberg managed tables using INSERT DML statements.

⚡ Core Engine Performance, Indexing & Optimization

• - View execution steps for UPDATE, DELETE, MERGE, and EXPORT statements directly in query plans.

🔌 Data Integration, Pipelines & Ingestion (ELT)

• - Validate SQL pipeline transformation logic against mock datasets before deploying to production.

• - Visualize source database connections and data flows to plan BigQuery warehouse migrations.

• - Connect external tools and BI platforms using the latest Simba ODBC driver release.

• - Integrate Java applications and enterprise tools using the updated Simba JDBC driver.

🔒 Security, Governance & Workload Management

• - Analyze security profiles and manage column-level policies and governance tags in the Cloud console.

• - Search and discover BigQuery Graph metadata automatically indexed within Knowledge Catalog.

• - Query INFORMATION_SCHEMA.FAILOVER_HISTORY to monitor reservation failover events in near real time.

As usual, let us know if there's anything: comments, questions, concerns!

Hi all,

Has anyone found a decent open source tool for asking questions in plain English on top of BigQuery? Something self hosted.

I tried Gemini in BigQuery and had a look at the conversational analytics API. The API gives you back SQL and a chart spec, so you still end up building the front end yourself, which is the part I was hoping to avoid.

My main worry is the numbers. If two people ask for revenue in slightly different words I'd like them to get the same answer, and I don't see how that works unless the metrics are defined somewhere.

The other thing is cost. I have no feel for how many queries a single question turns into once the model starts looking around the schema.