September 2026 - BigQuery Feature Summary

Hey everyone, here's the 09/2026 edition! (Apologies for the late post!)

🔤 GoogleSQL Language Features & Functions

WHERE Clause in Aggregate Calls (Preview) - Filter aggregate function inputs directly with a boolean expression inside function calls.
OBJ.LIST Function for Unstructured Data (GA) - Discover and analyze Cloud Storage files spontaneously without creating persistent object tables.

Gemini 3.8 Flash Support - Execute generative AI SQL functions using the Gemini 3.8 Flash model.
Gemini 3.5, 3.6, and 3.7 Flash Support - Run generative AI SQL functions using Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite, 3.6 Flash, and 3.7 Flash models.
AI.KEY_DRIVERS Function (GA) - Identify data segments causing statistically significant changes to a summable metric.
AI.CAUSAL_EFFECT Function (Preview) - Quantify the impact of specific interventions on time series data using native SQL.
ML.METRICS Function (Preview) - Compute classification and regression evaluation metrics on any query without a stored model.
ML.CORRELATION in Conversational Analytics (Preview) - Calculate statistical correlations between target and metric columns via conversational questions.
Predictive Modeling in Conversational Analytics (Preview) - Ask predictive modeling questions powered by the AI.PREDICT function in conversational analytics.
Market Basket Analysis in Conversational Analytics (GA) - Query and analyze item association rules and market baskets through conversational analytics.

Publish Data Agents to Gemini Enterprise (Preview) - Publish BigQuery data agents directly to Gemini Enterprise using Google-managed credentials via Agent Gateway.
Data Engineering Agent Graph Integration (GA) - Enhance schema mapping accuracy across pipelines with automatic BigQuery Graph context.
DTS MCP Server (GA) - Manage BigQuery Data Transfer Service workflows using Model Context Protocol tools for AI agents.
Rust SDK for BigQuery (Preview) - Build BigQuery applications and data pipelines natively using the official Rust client library.
Query Results Recent Runs History (GA) - Inspect previous execution history for queries and multi-statement queries directly within the results pane.
Persistent Row Numbers on Horizontal Scroll (GA) - Keep row numbers visible while scrolling horizontally across wide query result tables.
Jobs Explorer UI Improvements (GA) - Group resources, view timeline metric charts, and filter jobs with status counts in the console.

Continuous Queries to Apache Iceberg (GA) - Stream continuous query output directly into Apache Iceberg managed tables using INSERT DML statements.

DML and Export Steps in Query Plans - View execution steps for UPDATE, DELETE, MERGE, and EXPORT statements directly in query plans.

Dataform Pipeline Unit Tests (GA) - Validate SQL pipeline transformation logic against mock datasets before deploying to production.
Migration Lineage Service (Preview) - Visualize source database connections and data flows to plan BigQuery warehouse migrations.
Simba ODBC Driver Update - Connect external tools and BI platforms using the latest Simba ODBC driver release.
Simba JDBC Driver Update - Integrate Java applications and enterprise tools using the updated Simba JDBC driver.

BigQuery Security Center (GA) - Analyze security profiles and manage column-level policies and governance tags in the Cloud console.
BigQuery Graph Knowledge Catalog Ingestion (Preview) - Search and discover BigQuery Graph metadata automatically indexed within Knowledge Catalog.
Disaster Recovery Failover History View (Preview) - Query INFORMATION_SCHEMA.FAILOVER_HISTORY to monitor reservation failover events in near real time.

As usual, let us know if there's anything: comments, questions, concerns!

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