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Every row comes back in ascending key order, with its key in _key and one column per family:qualifier. The Google Cloud Bigtable driver is not in the app. Picking Google Cloud Bigtable in the Choose a Database sheet offers the download before the form opens, and opening a saved Google Cloud Bigtable connection installs it without asking. See Plugins.

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Quick setup

Click New Connection…, select Google Cloud Bigtable, pick an Auth Method, then click Save & Connect. The toolbar’s Instance switcher moves between the project’s instances without reconnecting, and an open tab stays on the instance it opened on. See Tabs.

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Connection settings

Project ID and Instance ID stand in for a host, a port and the Database field. Any instance connects, no connection URL opens one, and SSH Tunnel is not offered.

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Authentication

Reading needs the Bigtable Reader role and editing the Bigtable User role, granted on the project or on the instance.

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Browsing tables

The sidebar lists the instance’s tables. A grid page has a column for each family:qualifier its rows hold, so two pages can show different columns; the Structure tab lists the columns of the first 50 rows. In a column where the row has no cell, the grid reads No Field (Editing a cell). Each cell shows its newest version. Keys, qualifiers and values are bytes. UTF-8 text with no control characters other than tab and newline shows as itself. A key or qualifier that is anything else, or text that starts with b64:, shows as b64: and its base64, and that form reads back to the same bytes: type it that way in a filter, a request line or a new row’s _key. A value of that kind shows as hex. To filter on it, type it as b64: and its base64. A table’s grid keeps key order: clicking a column header does not sort it. A request’s results in the editor sort on screen when you click a header. A later page starts after the last key of the page before, and a page jumped to directly skips the rows before it by reading their keys alone. The status bar’s total stays blank until Count Exactly reads the key of every row the filters admit. See Pages and row counts.

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Filtering

Most filters on _key read only the keys they name: With Match Case off, equals, in list and starts with on _key run as a row key regex over every row too. A filter on a family:qualifier column keeps or drops whole rows by that cell’s newest value. A row without the cell matches only is NULL, so not equals, not contains and not in list leave it out too: Values are compared as bytes, so 9 sorts after 10. Under Match any, filters that are all equals, in list, starts with or a range on _key read only the keys each one names. Mix in any other filter and a range on _key is refused, while equals, in list and starts with on _key run as a row key regex over every row. In a Raw Filter row, write a RowFilter as the Bigtable REST reference shows it, bytes in base64; it runs unchanged. A cell filter such as valueRegexFilter trims each row to the matching cells and drops rows left with none. To keep or drop whole rows, wrap it in a condition whose trueFilter is {"passAllFilter": true}.

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Editing

Each changed row is one request, and its cells change together. A save has no transaction: when one row fails, the rows written before it stay written. A new row needs a _key and at least one cell. Duplicate and pasted rows copy every cell but _key, which shows DEFAULT until you type a key. The grid offers only the columns the rows on the page hold, so an empty table shows _key alone: write a table’s first row, or a cell under a column the page does not show, with INSERT or PUT in the request editor. The column family must already exist, and the DDL tab of the Structure tab lists them under columnFamilies. An existing row’s key cannot change. The save is refused, so duplicate the row, give the copy the new key, and delete the old one. Set DEFAULT in the row inspector is refused on an existing row too; set the cell to NULL to delete it, or enter a value. Text typed into a cell or into _key that starts with b64: is written as the bytes its base64 decodes to. Cells are written with the server’s clock.

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Request editor

The table goes before the first slash, and the key is everything after it up to a space or a ?. A key holding either goes in JSON quotes, GET events/"a b?c", and a binary key as b64:<base64>. A column after DELETE runs to the end of the line, so it may hold spaces. A request does not get the row cap in Settings > Data: a READ without rowsLimit returns up to 5,000,000 rows, so give it one. For Safe Mode, GET, SCAN and READ are reads and every other request is a write. A DELETE, or a PUT that sets a cell to null, also raises the dangerous query warning on Silent.

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SSL/TLS

Rows go to bigtable.googleapis.com and instances and tables to bigtableadmin.googleapis.com, both over HTTPS only. Per-driver defaults lists Bigtable among the drivers with no SSL Mode.

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Limitations

  • No GoogleSQL. Use the request editor.
  • No reverse scans. Rows come in ascending key order only; to start late in a table, filter _key with greater than.
  • Only the newest version of each cell shows, in a READ result too. An edit adds a new version; removing a cell deletes every version of it.
  • Tables and column families cannot be created, changed, truncated or dropped. Use the Google Cloud console or cbt.
  • Export fixes its columns from the first 500 rows. Columns that appear only later go into an __extra__ column as JSON, with bytes as b64: and base64.
  • Import is not available. Write rows with INSERT or PUT in the request editor.
  • A Bigtable connection synced to iPhone or iPad appears in the list but does not open there; open it on the Mac. See Supported databases.

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Troubleshooting

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Permission denied: ….

The message names what was refused, such as “read events” or “list instances”. Grant Bigtable Reader to read or Bigtable User to edit. A refused “list instances” means the role sits on one instance, not the project: fill in Instance ID so the connection skips the listing.

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Project … has no Bigtable instance.

The project in the message lists no Bigtable instance. With Project ID empty, that project came from the key or the Application Default Credentials, which need not be the one holding Bigtable. Set Project ID to the project with the instance.

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Row … already exists. Edit that row, or give the new one another key.

A new, duplicated or pasted row, or an INSERT line, names a key another row already has. Change _key on the new row, or edit the existing row instead.