From 94a0251abfea0f4f90d94c88341de19853565aaa Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: FAQ Bot <faq-bot@datatalks.club>
Date: Tue, 3 Feb 2026 21:17:14 +0000
Subject: [PATCH] NEW: How to obtain the DDL of a table in BigQuery?

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+---
+id: 7df3102580
+question: How to obtain the DDL of a table in BigQuery?
+sort_order: 25
+---
+
+### Goal
+To reproduce a BigQuery table's schema and data layout, you can query the INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES to retrieve the DDL needed to recreate the table.
+
+**For a normal (native) table in a dataset**
+
+```sql
+SELECT table_name, ddl
+FROM zoomcamp.INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES
+WHERE table_name = 'yellow_tripdata_parquet';
+```
+
+The result is the `CREATE TABLE` statement needed to recreate the table, e.g.:
+
+```sql
+CREATE TABLE `zoomcamp-ingenieria-datos.zoomcamp.yellow_tripdata_parquet`
+(
+VendorID INT64,
+tpep_pickup_datetime TIMESTAMP,
+tpep_dropoff_datetime TIMESTAMP,
+passenger_count INT64,
+trip_distance FLOAT64,
+RatecodeID INT64,
+store_and_fwd_flag STRING,
+PULocationID INT64,
+DOLocationID INT64,
+payment_type INT64,
+fare_amount FLOAT64,
+extra FLOAT64,
+mta_tax FLOAT64,
+tip_amount FLOAT64,
+tolls_amount FLOAT64,
+improvement_surcharge FLOAT64,
+total_amount FLOAT64,
+congestion_surcharge FLOAT64,
+Airport_fee FLOAT64
+);
+```
+
+**For an external table**
+
+```sql
+SELECT table_name, ddl
+FROM zoomcamp.INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES
+WHERE table_name = 'yellow_tripdata_parquet_ext';
+```
+
+The result would contain the DDL including the path of the external files, e.g.:
+
+```sql
+CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE `zoomcamp-ingenieria-datos.zoomcamp.yellow_tripdata_parquet_ext`
+OPTIONS(
+format="PARQUET",
+uris=["gs://newyork-taxi/yellow_tripdata_*.parquet"]
+);
+```
+
+Notes
+- This method works for both native and external tables. The exact path and URIs will depend on your dataset.
+- For more details, see the BigQuery information_schema-tables documentation.
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