Lesson 07

How does bigquery handle nested and repeated fields using STRUCT and ARRAY internally

Name: How does bigquery handle nested and repeated fields using STRUCT and ARRAY internally
Uploaded: 2026-05-06T16:15:40.895Z
Duration: 3 min 48 s
Description: STRUCT (a.k.a. RECORD) — a fixed group of named fields, like a row inside a row ARRAY — a repeated value of any type, including STRUCTs Combined, you get arbitrarily deep schemas — an order with line items, each line item with multiple discounts, each discount with a campaign reference. In a relational DB this would be 4 tables and 3 joins. In BigQuery it's one row.

STRUCT (a.k.a. RECORD) — a fixed group of named fields, like a row inside a row ARRAY — a repeated value of any type, including STRUCTs Combined, you get arbitrarily deep schemas — an order with line items, each line item with multiple discounts, each discount with a campaign reference. In a relational DB this would be 4 tables and 3 joins. In BigQuery it's one row.

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