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sleep

sleep(seconds)

Description

Sleep during seconds seconds

Usage

Call or Deploy sleep ?
Call sleep directly

The easiest way to use bigfunctions

  • sleep function is deployed in 39 public datasets for all of the 39 BigQuery regions.
  • It can be called by anyone. Just copy / paste examples below in your BigQuery console. It just works!
  • (You need to use the dataset in the same region as your datasets otherwise you may have a function not found error)

Public BigFunctions Datasets

Region Dataset
eu bigfunctions.eu
us bigfunctions.us
europe-west1 bigfunctions.europe_west1
asia-east1 bigfunctions.asia_east1
... ...
Deploy sleep in your project

Why deploy?

  • You may prefer to deploy sleep in your own project to build and manage your own catalog of functions.
  • This is particularly useful if you want to create private functions (for example calling your internal APIs).
  • Get started by reading the framework page

Deployment

sleep function can be deployed with:

pip install bigfunctions
bigfun get sleep
bigfun deploy sleep

Examples

Wait for 10 seconds

select bigfunctions.eu.sleep(10)

select bigfunctions.us.sleep(10)

select bigfunctions.europe_west1.sleep(10)

+----------+
| response |
+----------+
| ok       |
+----------+

Use cases

The sleep function in BigQuery can be useful in a few scenarios, primarily related to testing and managing dependencies within scripts or workflows:

  1. Testing BigQuery function performance: You can use sleep to introduce controlled delays and measure the execution time of other BigQuery functions or queries. This allows you to benchmark performance and identify bottlenecks.

  2. Simulating latency: In testing scenarios, you might want to simulate real-world conditions where there are delays in data processing or availability. sleep can help mimic these latencies.

  3. Managing dependencies in scripts: If you have a BigQuery script where one part needs to complete before another begins, you can use sleep to ensure a certain time has passed before the dependent part executes. However, this is generally not the ideal way to handle dependencies within a BigQuery script. BigQuery scripting features like WAIT clauses for MERGE statements or explicitly checking for job completion status offer more robust solutions. sleep would be a less reliable approach as execution times can vary.

  4. Rate limiting: If you're interacting with an external API or service via BigQuery and need to adhere to rate limits, sleep can be used to pause execution for a specified duration between calls. However, dedicated rate limiting libraries or built-in functionality within the API or service itself would be preferable for more precise control.

  5. Troubleshooting and debugging: In some cases, introducing a delay with sleep can be helpful for debugging timing-related issues or examining intermediate states within a complex BigQuery script.

Example (Testing performance):

-- Measure the time taken to execute a complex query
SELECT bigfunctions.eu.sleep(5); -- Introduce a delay to clear the cache (less reliable, better alternatives exist)

DECLARE start_time TIMESTAMP;
SET start_time = CURRENT_TIMESTAMP();

-- Your complex query here
SELECT * FROM large_table WHERE some_condition;

DECLARE end_time TIMESTAMP;
SET end_time = CURRENT_TIMESTAMP();

SELECT TIMESTAMP_DIFF(end_time, start_time, SECOND) AS execution_time;

Caveats: While sleep can be useful in limited cases, relying heavily on it within production BigQuery scripts is generally discouraged. For dependency management, error handling, and performance optimization, using BigQuery's built-in features and best practices is more appropriate. Using sleep for rate limiting is also suboptimal; dedicated rate-limiting mechanisms are more robust. It's primarily useful for simple testing and debugging scenarios.

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Report a bug about sleep

If the function does not work as expected, please

  • report a bug so that it can be improved.
  • or open the discussion with the community on Slack.

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