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Google BigQuery VS Google App Engine

Compare Google BigQuery VS Google App Engine and see what are their differences

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Google BigQuery logo Google BigQuery

A fully managed data warehouse for large-scale data analytics.

Google App Engine logo Google App Engine

A powerful platform to build web and mobile apps that scale automatically.
  • Google BigQuery Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-03
  • Google App Engine Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-17

Google BigQuery features and specs

  • Scalability
    BigQuery can effortlessly scale to handle large volumes of data due to its serverless architecture, thereby reducing the operational overhead of managing infrastructure.
  • Speed
    It leverages Google's infrastructure to provide high-speed data processing, making it possible to run complex queries on massive datasets in a matter of seconds.
  • Integrations
    BigQuery easily integrates with various Google Cloud Platform services, as well as other popular data tools like Looker, Tableau, and Power BI.
  • Automatic Optimization
    Features like automatic data partitioning and clustering help to optimize query performance without requiring manual tuning.
  • Security
    BigQuery provides robust security features including IAM roles, customer-managed encryption keys, and detailed audit logging.
  • Cost Efficiency
    The pricing model is based on the amount of data processed, which can be cost-effective for many use cases when compared to traditional data warehouses.
  • Managed Service
    Being fully managed, BigQuery takes care of database administration tasks such as scaling, backups, and patch management, allowing users to focus on their data and queries.

Possible disadvantages of Google BigQuery

  • Cost Predictability
    While the pay-per-use model can be cost-efficient, it can also make cost forecasting difficult. Unexpected large queries could lead to higher-than-anticipated costs.
  • Complexity
    The learning curve can be steep for those who are not already familiar with SQL or Google Cloud Platform, potentially requiring training and education.
  • Limited Updates
    BigQuery is optimized for read-heavy operations, and it can be less efficient for scenarios that require frequent updates or deletions of data.
  • Query Pricing
    Costs are based on the amount of data processed by each query, which may not be suitable for use cases that require frequent analysis of large datasets.
  • Data Transfer Costs
    While internal data movement within Google Cloud can be cost-effective, transferring data to or from other services or on-premises systems can incur additional costs.
  • Dependency on Google Cloud
    Organizations heavily invested in multi-cloud or hybrid-cloud strategies may find the dependency on Google Cloud limiting.
  • Cold Data Performance
    Query performance might be slower for so-called 'cold data,' or data that has not been queried recently, affecting the responsiveness for some workloads.

Google App Engine features and specs

  • Auto-scaling
    Google App Engine automatically scales your application based on the traffic it receives, ensuring that your application can handle varying workloads without manual intervention.
  • Managed environment
    App Engine provides a fully managed environment, covering infrastructure management tasks like server provisioning, patching, monitoring, and managing app versions.
  • Integrated services
    Seamlessly integrates with other Google Cloud services such as Datastore, Cloud SQL, Pub/Sub, and more, offering a comprehensive ecosystem for building and deploying applications.
  • Multiple languages support
    Supports multiple programming languages including Java, Python, PHP, Node.js, Go, Ruby, and .NET, giving developers flexibility in choosing their preferred language.
  • Security
    Offers robust security features including Identity and Access Management (IAM), Cloud Identity, and automated security updates, which help protect your applications from vulnerabilities.
  • Developer productivity
    App Engine allows rapid development and deployment, letting developers focus on writing code without worrying about infrastructure management, thus boosting productivity.
  • Versioning
    Supports versioning of applications, allowing multiple versions of the application to be hosted simultaneously, which helps in A/B testing and rollback capabilities.

Possible disadvantages of Google App Engine

  • Cost
    While you pay for what you use, costs can escalate quickly with high traffic or resource-intensive applications. Detailed cost prediction can be challenging.
  • Vendor lock-in
    Relying heavily on Google App Engine's proprietary services and APIs can make it difficult to migrate applications to other platforms, leading to vendor lock-in.
  • Limited control
    Being a fully managed service, App Engine provides limited control over the underlying infrastructure which might be a limitation for certain advanced use cases.
  • Environment constraints
    Certain restrictions and limitations are imposed on the runtime environment, such as request timeout limits and specific resource quotas, which can affect application performance.
  • Complex debugging
    Debugging issues in a highly abstracted managed environment can be more complex and difficult compared to traditional server-hosted applications.
  • Cold start latency
    Serverless environments like App Engine can suffer from cold start latency, where the initial request triggers a delay as the environment spins up resources.
  • Configuration complexity
    Despite its benefits, configuring and optimizing App Engine for specific scenarios can be more complex than expected, requiring a steep learning curve.

Analysis of Google BigQuery

Overall verdict

  • Google BigQuery is a powerful and flexible data warehouse solution that suits a wide range of data analytics needs. Its ability to handle large volumes of data quickly makes it a preferred choice for organizations looking to leverage their data effectively.

Why this product is good

  • Google BigQuery is a fully-managed data warehouse that simplifies the analysis of large datasets. It is known for its scalability, speed, and integration with other Google Cloud services. It supports standard SQL, has built-in machine learning capabilities, and allows for seamless data integration from various sources. The serverless architecture means that users don't need to worry about infrastructure management, and its pay-as-you-go model provides cost efficiency.

Recommended for

  • Businesses requiring fast processing of large datasets
  • Organizations that already utilize Google Cloud services
  • Companies looking for a cost-effective, scalable analytics solution
  • Teams interested in using SQL for data analysis
  • Data scientists integrating machine learning with their data workflows

Analysis of Google App Engine

Overall verdict

  • Google App Engine is generally considered a good choice for developers looking for a serverless platform to deploy their applications quickly without managing underlying infrastructure. Its ease of use, scalability, and integration with Google's ecosystem make it a strong option, especially for projects expecting to scale significantly or require integration with other Google Cloud services.

Why this product is good

  • Google App Engine is a fully managed serverless platform that allows developers to build scalable web applications and mobile backends. It abstracts away infrastructure management, handles scaling automatically, and offers integration with other Google Cloud services, providing a high degree of flexibility and efficiency. Its key strengths include support for multiple programming languages, built-in security features, and seamless connectivity to Google's machine learning and data analytics tools.

Recommended for

    Google App Engine is recommended for developers building web applications who prefer a Platform as a Service (PaaS) model, startups who need a solution that can grow with them without worrying about scaling issues, teams wanting to leverage Google's robust data and analytics offerings, and businesses that require a global reach with reliable performance.

Google BigQuery videos

Cloud Dataprep Tutorial - Getting Started 101

More videos:

  • Review - Advanced Data Cleanup Techniques using Cloud Dataprep (Cloud Next '19)
  • Demo - Google Cloud Dataprep Premium product demo

Google App Engine videos

Get to know Google App Engine

More videos:

  • Review - Developing apps that scale automatically with Google App Engine

Category Popularity

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Data Dashboard
100 100%
0% 0
Cloud Computing
0 0%
100% 100
Big Data
100 100%
0% 0
Cloud Hosting
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Google BigQuery and Google App Engine

Google BigQuery Reviews

Data Warehouse Tools
Google BigQuery: Similar to Snowflake, BigQuery offers a pay-per-use model with separate charges for storage and queries. Storage costs start around $0.01 per GB per month, while on-demand queries are billed at $5 per TB processed.
Source: peliqan.io
Top 6 Cloud Data Warehouses in 2023
You can also use BigQuery’s columnar and ANSI SQL databases to analyze petabytes of data at a fast speed. Its capabilities extend enough to accommodate spatial analysis using SQL and BigQuery GIS. Also, you can quickly create and run machine learning (ML) models on semi or large-scale structured data using simple SQL and BigQuery ML. Also, enjoy a real-time interactive...
Source: geekflare.com
Top 5 Cloud Data Warehouses in 2023
Google BigQuery is an incredible platform for enterprises that want to run complex analytical queries or “heavy” queries that operate using a large set of data. This means it’s not ideal for running queries that are doing simple filtering or aggregation. So if your cloud data warehousing needs lightning-fast performance on a big set of data, Google BigQuery might be a great...
Top 5 BigQuery Alternatives: A Challenge of Complexity
BigQuery's emergence as an attractive analytics and data warehouse platform was a significant win, helping to drive a 45% increase in Google Cloud revenue in the last quarter. The company plans to maintain this momentum by focusing on a multi-cloud future where BigQuery advances the cause of democratized analytics.
Source: blog.panoply.io
16 Top Big Data Analytics Tools You Should Know About
Google BigQuery is a fully-managed, serverless data warehouse that enables scalable analysis over petabytes of data. It is a Platform as a Service that supports querying using ANSI SQL. It also has built-in machine learning capabilities.

Google App Engine Reviews

Top 5 Alternatives to Heroku
Google App Engine is fast, easy, but not that very cheap. The pricing is reasonable, and it comes with a free tier, which is great for small projects that are right for beginner developers who want to quickly set up their apps. It can also auto scale, create new instances as needed and automatically handle high availability. App Engine gets a positive rating for performance...
AppScale - The Google App Engine Alternative
AppScale is open source Google App Engine and allows you to run your GAE applications on any infrastructure, anywhere that makes sense for your business. AppScale eliminates lock-in and makes your GAE application portable. This way you can choose which public or private cloud platform is the best fit for your business requirements. Because we are literally the GAE...

Social recommendations and mentions

Google BigQuery might be a bit more popular than Google App Engine. We know about 42 links to it since March 2021 and only 31 links to Google App Engine. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Google BigQuery mentions (42)

  • Every Database Will Support Iceberg — Here's Why
    This isn’t hypothetical. It’s already happening. Snowflake supports reading and writing Iceberg. Databricks added Iceberg interoperability via Unity Catalog. Redshift and BigQuery are working toward it. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • RisingWave Turns Four: Our Journey Beyond Democratizing Stream Processing
    Many of these companies first tried achieving real-time results with batch systems like Snowflake or BigQuery. But they quickly found that even five-minute batch intervals weren't fast enough for today's event-driven needs. They turn to RisingWave for its simplicity, low operational burden, and easy integration with their existing PostgreSQL-based infrastructure. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • How to Pitch Your Boss to Adopt Apache Iceberg?
    If your team is managing large volumes of historical data using platforms like Snowflake, Amazon Redshift, or Google BigQuery, you’ve probably noticed a shift happening in the data engineering world. A new generation of data infrastructure is forming — one that prioritizes openness, interoperability, and cost-efficiency. At the center of that shift is Apache Iceberg. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • Study Notes 2.2.7: Managing Schedules and Backfills with BigQuery in Kestra
    BigQuery Documentation: Google Cloud BigQuery. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • Docker vs. Kubernetes: Which Is Right for Your DevOps Pipeline?
    Pro Tip: Use Kubernetes operators to extend its functionality for specific cloud services like AWS RDS or GCP BigQuery. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
View more

Google App Engine mentions (31)

  • Guide to modern app-hosting without servers on Google Cloud
    If Google App Engine (GAE) is the "OG" serverless platform, Cloud Run (GCR) is its logical successor, crafted for today's modern app-hosting needs. GAE was the 1st generation of Google serverless platforms. It has since been joined, about a decade later, by 2nd generation services, GCR and Cloud Functions (GCF). GCF is somewhat out-of-scope for this post so I'll cover that another time. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • Security in the Cloud: Your Role in the Shared Responsibility Model
    As Windsales Inc. expands, it adopts a PaaS model to offload server and runtime management, allowing its developers and engineers to focus on code development and deployment. By partnering with providers like Heroku and Google App Engine, Windsales Inc. Accesses a fully managed runtime environment. This choice relieves Windsales Inc. Of managing servers, OS updates, or runtime environment behavior. Instead,... - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • Hosting apps in the cloud with Google App Engine in 2024
    Google App Engine (GAE) is their original serverless solution and first cloud product, launching in 2008 (video), giving rise to Serverless 1.0 and the cloud computing platform-as-a-service (PaaS) service level. It didn't do function-hosting nor was the concept of containers mainstream yet. GAE was specifically for (web) app-hosting (but also supported mobile backends as well). - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
  • Fixing A Broken Deployment to Google App Engine
    In 2014, I took a web development on Udacity that was taught by Steve Huffman of Reddit fame. He taught authentication, salting passwords, the difference between GET and POST requests, basic html and css, caching techniques. It was a fantastic introduction to web dev. To pass the course, students deployed simple python servers to Google App Engine. When I started to look for work, I opted to use code from that... - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
  • Next.js Deployment: Vercel's Charm vs. GCP's Muscle
    GCP offers a comprehensive suite of cloud services, including Compute Engine, App Engine, and Cloud Run. This translates to unparalleled control over your infrastructure and deployment configurations. Designed for large-scale applications, GCP effortlessly scales to accommodate significant traffic growth. Additionally, for projects heavily reliant on Google services like BigQuery, Cloud Storage, or AI/ML tools,... - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Google BigQuery and Google App Engine, you can also consider the following products

Databricks - Databricks provides a Unified Analytics Platform that accelerates innovation by unifying data science, engineering and business.‎What is Apache Spark?

Salesforce Platform - Salesforce Platform is a comprehensive PaaS solution that paves the way for the developers to test, build, and mitigate the issues in the cloud application before the final deployment.

Looker - Looker makes it easy for analysts to create and curate custom data experiences—so everyone in the business can explore the data that matters to them, in the context that makes it truly meaningful.

Heroku - Agile deployment platform for Ruby, Node.js, Clojure, Java, Python, and Scala. Setup takes only minutes and deploys are instant through git. Leave tedious server maintenance to Heroku and focus on your code.

Jupyter - Project Jupyter exists to develop open-source software, open-standards, and services for interactive computing across dozens of programming languages. Ready to get started? Try it in your browser Install the Notebook.

Dokku - Docker powered mini-Heroku in around 100 lines of Bash