Update August 2020 : SQL Parameter are better supported now, please go tho this updated blog
in the last 12 months, Google Data Studio has added many new interesting new features, specially the integration with BigQuery BI engine, and custom SQL Queries.
Obviously, I am a huge PowerBI fan, and I think it is the best thing that happen to analytics since Excel, but if you want to share a secure report without requiring a license for every user, Data Studio is becoming a valid option.
I have already blogged about building a near real time dashboard using Bigquery and Data Studio , but in this quick blog, I will try to show case that using SQL one can create a more complex business logic reports.
I am using a typical dataset we have in our industry, a lot of facts tables, with different granularity, the facts tables don’t all update at the same time, planned values changes only when there is a program revision, actual changes every day.
Instead of writing the steps here, please view the report that include the how to and the results.
The approach is pretty simple, all modern BI software works more or less the same way( at least PowerBI & Qlik, Tableau is coming soon), you load data to different tables then you model the data by creating relationships between the tables, then you create measures, when you click on a filter for example, or when you add dimension to a chart, the software generate a SQL query to the data source based on the existing relationship defined in the data model, it is really amazing , even without knowing any SQL coding you can do very complicated analysis.
Data Studio is no different to other tools, the Data Modeling is called Blending, it link all the tables together using left join, which is a big limitation as if some values exist in one table and not in others, you will miss data.
The idea is let’s bypass the modeling layer and write some SQL code, and to make it dynamic let’s use parameters, it is not an ideal solution for an average Business users ( we don’t particularly like code) but it is a workaround, till Data Studio improve it’s offering.
Project Controls blog 