A database is an organized collection of data that allows users to store, retrieve, and manage data efficiently, serving as the foundation of most software applications.
Characteristics of databases include structured data storage, using DBMS, supporting CRUD operations, and ensuring ACID compliance for reliability.
Types of databases include Relational Databases (RDBMS) and NoSQL databases with subcategories like document-based, key-value stores, columnar stores, and graph databases.
A Data Warehouse is designed for reporting and data analysis, consolidating large volumes of structured data from multiple sources for analytical queries and historical data storage.
Data Warehouses differ from databases in purpose, data type, normalization, query type, and user focus.
Types of Data Warehouses include Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW), Operational Data Store (ODS), and Data Marts, each serving specific organizational needs.
Examples of Data Warehouses are Teradata, Snowflake, Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery, and Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics.
BigQuery is a fully managed, serverless, scalable, and cost-effective cloud data warehouse by Google Cloud Platform, designed for business agility and handling massive datasets efficiently.
Key features of BigQuery include high scalability, super-fast query processing, support for batch and streaming data ingestion, built-in Machine Learning with BigQuery ML, serverless management, and pay-as-you-go pricing.
BigQuery's out-of-the-box features include GIS analysis, auto backup, integration with other Google Cloud services, support for BI capabilities, programmatic interaction via APIs, enterprise-grade security and compliance, monitoring, logging, alerting, federated queries, running data science workloads, and access to public datasets.