Google BigQuery: English to SQL capabilities

A couple of weeks ago, I attended the Google Cloud Next conference and one demo really stood out: Google's updates to BigQuery. For those unfamiliar, BigQuery is Google Cloud’s serverless data warehouse a powerful tool that lets teams run lightning-fast SQL queries on massive datasets. New BigQuery Graph features builds on that by adding graph-based relationships between data points, making it easier to explore connections and uncover insights that traditional tables may miss.

But what really caught my attention was how Google is now making these tools more accessible. Instead of needing to know SQL, you can now ask questions in plain English and the system will generate the correct SQL query and surface the insights.

As someone who’s always been invested in data but came up through finance rather than engineering, this struck a chord. I’ve dabbled in SQL, but never got more than an inch deep. These new natural language capabilities could be very helpful. They lower the barrier to entry for professionals like me people who know what they’re looking for, but haven’t spent years writing queries.

It’s a reminder that the AI revolution isn’t just about making machines smarter. It’s about making powerful tools more usable for the rest of us.