Specifies whether to use the Arrow format instead of Avro when reading data through the Google BigQuery Storage API.

Syntax

Connect-GoogleBigQuery -UseArrowFormat SwitchParameter

Data Type

bool

Default Value

false

Remarks

This property only takes effect when UseStorageAPI is enabled. When reading data from Google BigQuery using the Storage API, the cmdlet can request the result set in different formats. By default, it uses Avro, but enabling this property switches the format to Arrow.

Using Arrow can offer performance benefits for certain workloads, particularly those involving time series data or tables with many date, time, datetime, or timestamp fields. In these cases, Arrow can result in faster reads and more efficient memory usage.

For most other datasets, the difference in performance between Avro and Arrow is minimal. Enable this property when working with temporal data types or when you observe performance bottlenecks with Avro in Storage API reads.