Getting “Query too large” in BigQuery

Question

I am storing event data in BigQuery, partitioned by day - one table per day. The following query failed:

select count(distinct event) 
from TABLE_DATE_RANGE(         


        

Answer 1

"Query too large" in this case means that the TABLE_RANGE is getting expanded internally to too many tables, generating an internal query that is too large to be processed.

This has 2 workarounds:

• Query less tables (could you aggregate these tables into a bigger one?).
• Wait until the BQ team solves this issue internally. Instead of using a workaround, you should be able to run this query unchanged. Just not today :).