Before you begin
- Labs create a Google Cloud project and resources for a fixed time
- Labs have a time limit and no pause feature. If you restart it, you'll have to start from the beginning.
- Click Start lab to begin
Create a Cloud SQL instance
/ 30
Whitelist the Cloud Shell instance to access your SQL instance
/ 30
Create a bts database and flights table using the create_table.sql file
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In this lab, you import data from CSV text files into Cloud SQL and then carry out some basic data analysis using simple queries.
The dataset used in this lab comes from the US Bureau of Transport Statistics and contains historical information about internal flights in the United States. This dataset can be used to demonstrate a wide range of data science concepts and techniques.
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 will be made available to you.
This hands-on lab lets you do the lab activities yourself in a real cloud environment, not in a simulation or demo environment. It does so by giving you new, temporary credentials that you use to sign in and access Google Cloud for the duration of the lab.
To complete this lab, you need:
Click the Start Lab button. If you need to pay for the lab, a pop-up opens for you to select your payment method. On the left is the Lab Details panel with the following:
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.
If necessary, copy the Username below and paste it into the Sign in dialog.
You can also find the Username in the Lab Details panel.
Click Next.
Copy the Password below and paste it into the Welcome dialog.
You can also find the Password in the Lab Details panel.
Click Next.
Click through the subsequent pages:
After a few moments, the Google Cloud console opens in this tab.
Cloud Shell is a virtual machine that is loaded with development tools. It offers a persistent 5GB home directory and runs on the Google Cloud. Cloud Shell provides command-line access to your Google Cloud resources.
When you are connected, you are already authenticated, and the project is set to your Project_ID,
gcloud
is the command-line tool for Google Cloud. It comes pre-installed on Cloud Shell and supports tab-completion.
Output:
Output:
gcloud
, in Google Cloud, refer to the gcloud CLI overview guide.
This lab uses a set of code samples and scripts developed for the Data Science on the Google Cloud Platform, 2nd Edition book from O'Reilly Media, Inc. It covers the configuration of Cloud SQL and importing data tasks covered in the first part of Chapter 3, "Creating Compelling Dashboards". You clone the sample repository used in Chapter 2 from Github to the Cloud Shell and carry out all of the lab tasks from there.
This takes a few minutes to complete.
Click Check my progress to verify your performed task. If you have successfully created a Cloud SQL instance, you will see an assessment score.
Click Check my progress to verify your performed task. If you have successfully allowlisted Cloud Shell to access the SQL instance, you will see an assessment score.
To import data into a Postgres table, you first create an empty database and a table with the correct schema.
In the Cloud Console, on the Navigation menu (), click SQL.
To open the Overview page of an instance, click the instance name flights
.
Select Databases from the SQL navigation menu on the left.
Click Create database.
In the New database dialog, name the database bts
.
Click Create.
To open the Overview page of an instance, select Overview from the SQL navigation menu.
Click IMPORT on the top.
In the Cloud Storage file field, click Browse.
In the Buckets section, click the arrow opposite your bucket name.
Select the file create_table.sql
.
Click Select.
In the File format section, select SQL.
Specify the Database bts
in your Cloud SQL instance.
Click Import start the import.
A few seconds later, the empty table will be created.
Click Check my progress to verify your performed task. If you have successfully created a bts database and flights table using the create_table.sql file, you will see an assessment score.
You created the empty database and table, now load the CSV files into this table. Loading the January data by browsing to 201501.csv in your bucket and specifying CSV as the format, bts as the database, and flights as the table.
In your Cloud SQL instance page, click IMPORT.
In the Cloud Storage file field, click Browse, and then click the arrow opposite your bucket name, and then click 201501.csv
.
Click Select.
Select CSV as File format.
Select the bts
database and type in flights
as your table.
Click IMPORT.
When prompted for a password enter Passw0rd
. You may not see the letters as you type.
In the prompt that comes up, connect to the bts database:
When prompted for a password enter Passw0rd
.
Then, run a query to obtain the 5 busiest airports:
While this query is performant because the dataset is relatively small (only January!), the database will slow as you add more months.
Relational databases are suited to smallish datasets on which you perform ad hoc queries that return a small a subset of the data. For larger datasets, you tune the performance of a relational database by indexing the columns of interest. Further, because relational databases typically support transactions and guarantee strong consistency, they are an excellent choice for data that will be updated often.
However, a relational database is a poor choice if:
This describes the flight delay use case. For this case you would switch from a relational database to an analytics data warehouse – BigQuery. The analytics data warehouse will allow us to use SQL and is much more capable of dealing with large datasets and ad hoc queries (i.e. doesn’t need the columns to be indexed).
Now you know how to create tables and import text data that has been stored on Cloud Storage into Cloud SQL.
Here are some follow-up steps:
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Manual Last Updated July 9, 2024
Lab Last Tested July 16, 2024
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