arrow_back

Reconciling Account Data with Cloud Spanner Change Streams

Sign in Join
Quick tip: Review the prerequisites before you run the lab
Use an Incognito or private browser window to run this lab. This prevents any conflicts between your personal account and the student account, which may cause extra charges incurred to your personal account.
Test and share your knowledge with our community!
done
Get access to over 700 hands-on labs, skill badges, and courses

Reconciling Account Data with Cloud Spanner Change Streams

Lab 45 minutes universal_currency_alt 3 Credits show_chart Intermediate
info This lab may incorporate AI tools to support your learning.
Test and share your knowledge with our community!
done
Get access to over 700 hands-on labs, skill badges, and courses

GSP1097

Overview

Account reconciliation is one of the many mandatory business processes for a plethora of businesses in numberless industry verticals. While every business has its procedures, it follows a pretty standard process of matching transactions across ledgers and bank statements to ensure financial accuracy of accounts. Reconciliation and audit tools help teams maximize their productivity and save time in what would otherwise be a very timely process of account reconciliation.

In this lab, you will create an account table in Google Cloud Spanner and set up a monitoring pipeline with Spanner's change streams feature and Google Dataflow. The changes will be reflected in BigQuery.

What you'll learn

In this lab, you learn how to perform the following tasks:

  • Create an account table in Spanner
  • Create a change streams monitoring hook in Spanner
  • Configure and run change streams Dataflow job
  • Monitor the changes in BigQuery

Setup and requirements

Before you click the Start Lab button

Read these instructions. Labs are timed and you cannot pause them. The timer, which starts when you click Start Lab, shows how long Google Cloud resources are made available to you.

This hands-on lab lets you do the lab activities in a real cloud environment, not in a simulation or demo environment. It does so by giving you new, temporary credentials you use to sign in and access Google Cloud for the duration of the lab.

To complete this lab, you need:

  • Access to a standard internet browser (Chrome browser recommended).
Note: Use an Incognito (recommended) or private browser window to run this lab. This prevents conflicts between your personal account and the student account, which may cause extra charges incurred to your personal account.
  • Time to complete the lab—remember, once you start, you cannot pause a lab.
Note: Use only the student account for this lab. If you use a different Google Cloud account, you may incur charges to that account.

How to start your lab and sign in to the Google Cloud console

  1. Click the Start Lab button. If you need to pay for the lab, a dialog opens for you to select your payment method. On the left is the Lab Details pane with the following:

    • The Open Google Cloud console button
    • Time remaining
    • The temporary credentials that you must use for this lab
    • Other information, if needed, to step through this lab

  2. Click Open Google Cloud console (or right-click and select Open Link in Incognito Window if you are running the Chrome browser).

    The lab spins up resources, and then opens another tab that shows the Sign in page.

    Tip: Arrange the tabs in separate windows, side-by-side.

    Note: If you see the Choose an account dialog, click Use Another Account.

  3. If necessary, copy the Username below and paste it into the Sign in dialog.

    {{{user_0.username | "Username"}}}

    You can also find the Username in the Lab Details pane.

  4. Click Next.

  5. Copy the Password below and paste it into the Welcome dialog.

    {{{user_0.password | "Password"}}}

    You can also find the Password in the Lab Details pane.

  6. Click Next.

    Important: You must use the credentials the lab provides you. Do not use your Google Cloud account credentials. Note: Using your own Google Cloud account for this lab may incur extra charges.

  7. Click through the subsequent pages:

    • Accept the terms and conditions.
    • Do not add recovery options or two-factor authentication (because this is a temporary account).
    • Do not sign up for free trials.

After a few moments, the Google Cloud console opens in this tab.

Note: To access Google Cloud products and services, click the Navigation menu or type the service or product name in the Search field.

Task 1. Create a database accounts and insert DDL

  1. From the Cloud Console Navigation menu (), click View All Products and under Databases click Spanner.

  2. Click on the bitfoon-dev instance.

  3. From the instance details page, click Create Database.

  4. For the database name, enter finance.

  5. For Select database dialect select Google Standard SQL..

  6. In the Define your schema box, copy and paste following DDL:

CREATE TABLE Account ( AccountId BYTES(16) NOT NULL, CreationTimestamp TIMESTAMP NOT NULL OPTIONS (allow_commit_timestamp=true), AccountStatus INT64 NOT NULL, Balance NUMERIC NOT NULL ) PRIMARY KEY (AccountId);
  1. Click Create. Your database should resemble the following:

Great! You have created an accounts database.

Click Check my progress to verify the objective. Create the database accounts and insert DDL

Task 2. Insert arbitrary account data

  1. From the finance database, click on Spanner Studio in the left menu.

  2. Copy and paste following query into the box:

INSERT INTO Account (AccountId, CreationTimestamp, AccountStatus, Balance) VALUES (FROM_BASE64('ACCOUNTID11123'), PENDING_COMMIT_TIMESTAMP(), 1, 22)
  1. Click Run.

Your output should resemble:

1 row inserted This statement inserted 1 row and did not return any rows.
  1. Repeat the query step three times with different Account IDs to create multiple accounts. Use the following Account IDs:
    • ACCOUNTID12345
    • ACCOUNTID24680
    • ACCOUNTID135791

Great! You have inserted multiple accounts in your database.

Task 3. Create a change stream for Balance and AccountStatus

  1. From the finance database, click on Change Streams in the left menu.

  2. Click +CREATE CHANGE STREAM.

  3. Copy and paste following schema into the Editor box:

CREATE CHANGE STREAM AccountUpdateStream FOR Account(AccountStatus, Balance);

  1. Click Run.

  2. Navigate back to the Change Streams page. Verify you change stream has been created:

The change stream is now created with a default retention period of 24h. You can check out other options here.

Click Check my progress to verify the objective. Create a change stream for Balance and AccountStatus

Task 4. Create an reconciliation dataset in BigQuery to receive change stream data

  1. On the Cloud Console Navigation menu (), click BigQuery.

  2. click on the View actions icon () next to your Project ID and click Create dataset.

  3. Name the new dataset changestream.

  4. Click Create Dataset.

Great! You have successfully created an reconciliation table.

Click Check my progress to verify the objective. Create an reconciliation dataset in BigQuery to receive change stream data

Task 5. Create a Dataflow change stream pipeline

  1. On the Cloud Console Navigation menu (), click View All Products and under Analytics click Dataflow.

  2. Click Create job from template.

  3. For Job name type change-stream-pipeline.

  4. For Regional Endpoint select .

  5. For Dataflow Template select Cloud Spanner change streams to BigQuery.

  1. Fill out the required parameters with the following values:

    • Spanner instance ID: bitfoon-dev
    • Spanner database: finance
    • Spanner change stream: AccountUpdateStream
    • BigQuery dataset: changestream
    • Spanner metadata instance ID: bitfoon-dev
    • Spanner metadata database: finance

  2. Click Run Job.

Start the Dataflow job

  1. On the Cloud Console Navigation menu (), under Databases click Spanner.

  2. Click on the bitfoon-dev instance.

  3. Click on database finance.

  4. Click on Spanner Studio in the left menu.

  5. Run the following query to kick off the Dataflow job:

INSERT INTO Account (AccountId, CreationTimestamp, AccountStatus, Balance) VALUES (FROM_BASE64('ACCOUNTID98765'), PENDING_COMMIT_TIMESTAMP(), 1, 22)

  1. On the Cloud Console Navigation menu (), click View All Products and under Analytics click Dataflow.

  2. Verify the Dataflow job is running.

Click Check my progress to verify the objective. Create a Dataflow change stream pipeline

Task 6. Create changes in Spanner and track them in BigQuery

  1. From the Cloud Console Navigation menu (), click View All Products and under Databases click Spanner.

  2. Click on the bitfoon-dev instance.

  3. Click on database finance.

  4. Click on Spanner Studio in the left menu.

  5. Copy and paste following update query into the box:

UPDATE Account SET CreationTimestamp=PENDING_COMMIT_TIMESTAMP(), AccountStatus=4, Balance=255 WHERE AccountId=FROM_BASE64('ACCOUNTID11123');

  1. Click Run.

  2. Repeat the query step three times with balance values to create multiple changes. Use the following balance values:

    • 300
    • 500
    • 600

  3. On the Cloud Console Navigation menu (), click BigQuery.

  4. Navigate to the changestream dataset and select Account_changelog and observe the changes.

Note: it may take a few minutes for the results to populate the table.
  1. Select the Preview tab to see the results. Your table should resemble the following:

Click Check my progress to verify the objective. Create changes in Spanner and track them in BigQuery

Congratulations!

In this lab you implemented a reconciliation and audit pipeline for an account and balances example on Google Cloud using Spanner, Dataflow, and BigQuery.

Next steps / Learn more

Check out the following resources to learn more about change streams and Spanner:

Manual Last Updated March 25, 2025

Lab Last Tested March 25, 2025

Copyright 2025 Google LLC All rights reserved. Google and the Google logo are trademarks of Google LLC. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

Before you begin

  1. Labs create a Google Cloud project and resources for a fixed time
  2. Labs have a time limit and no pause feature. If you end the lab, you'll have to restart from the beginning.
  3. On the top left of your screen, click Start lab to begin

This content is not currently available

We will notify you via email when it becomes available

Great!

We will contact you via email if it becomes available

One lab at a time

Confirm to end all existing labs and start this one

Use private browsing to run the lab

Use an Incognito or private browser window to run this lab. This prevents any conflicts between your personal account and the Student account, which may cause extra charges incurred to your personal account.