SESSIONS_BY_USER view

TheINFORMATION_SCHEMA.SESSIONS_BY_USER view contains real-timemetadata about BigQuery sessions created by the current user inthe current project.

Required permissions

To query theINFORMATION_SCHEMA.SESSIONS_BY_USER view, you needthebigquery.jobs.list Identity and Access Management (IAM) permission for the project.Each of the following predefined IAM roles includes therequired permission:

Project Viewer
BigQuery User

For more information about BigQuery permissions, seeAccess control with IAM.

Schema

When you query theINFORMATION_SCHEMA.SESSIONS_BY_* views, the query resultscontain one row for each BigQuery session.

TheINFORMATION_SCHEMA.SESSIONS_BY_* view has the following schema:

Note: The underlying data is partitioned by thecreation_time column andclustered byproject_id anduser_email.

Column name	Data type	Value
`creation_time`	`TIMESTAMP`	(Partitioning column) Creation time of this session. Partitioning is based on the UTC time of this timestamp.
`expiration_time`	`TIMESTAMP`	(Partitioning column) Expiration time of this session. Partitioning is based on the UTC time of this timestamp.
`is_active`	`BOOL`	Is the session is still active?`TRUE` if yes, otherwise`FALSE`.
`last_modified_time`	`TIMESTAMP`	(Partitioning column) Time when the session was last modified. Partitioning is based on the UTC time of this timestamp.
`project_id`	`STRING`	(Clustering column) ID of the project.
`project_number`	`INTEGER`	Number of the project.
`session_id`	`STRING`	ID of the session. For example,`bquxsession_1234`.
`user_email`	`STRING`	(Clustering column) Email address or service account of the user who ran the session.

For stability, we recommend that you explicitly list columns in your information schema queries instead ofusing a wildcard (SELECT *). Explicitly listing columns prevents queries frombreaking if the underlying schema changes.

Data retention

This view contains currently running sessions and the history of sessionscompleted in the past 180 days.

Scope and syntax

Queries against this view must include a region qualifier.If you do not specify a regional qualifier, metadata is retrieved from allregions. The following table explains the region scope for this view:

View name	Resource scope	Region scope
[PROJECT_ID.]`region-REGION`.INFORMATION_SCHEMA.SESSIONS_BY_USER	Sessions created by the current user in the specified project.	`REGION`

Replace the following:

Optional:PROJECT_ID: the ID of your Google Cloud project. If not specified, the default project is used.
REGION: anydataset region name. For example,`region-us`.
Note: You must use a region qualifier to queryINFORMATION_SCHEMA views. The location of the query execution must match the region of theINFORMATION_SCHEMA view.

Example

To run the query against a project other than your default project, add theproject ID in the following format:

`PROJECT_ID`.`region-REGION_NAME`.INFORMATION_SCHEMA.SESSIONS_BY_USER

For example,`myproject`.`region-us`.INFORMATION_SCHEMA.SESSIONS_BY_USER.

The following example lists sessions that were created by the current user:

SELECTsession_id,creation_timeFROM`region-us`.INFORMATION_SCHEMA.SESSIONS_BY_USERWHEREcreation_time>=TIMESTAMP_SUB(CURRENT_TIMESTAMP(),INTERVAL1DAY)ORDERBYcreation_timeDESC;

Note:INFORMATION_SCHEMA view names are case-sensitive.

The results should look like the following:

+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+| session_id                                        | creation_time       |+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+| CgwKCmZhbGl1LXRlc3QQARokMGQ5YWWYzZmE0YjhkMDBm     | 2021-06-01 08:04:26 || CgwKCmZhbGl1LXRlc3QQARokMDAzYjI0OWQtZTczwZjA1NDc2 | 2021-05-31 22:43:02 |+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+

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Last updated 2026-02-05 UTC.