📅 2025-02-28 — Session: BigQuery Public Access and Email Search Setup

🕒 00:20–02:05
🏷️ Labels: Bigquery, Public Access, MBOX, Elasticsearch, Troubleshooting
📂 Project: Teaching
⭐ Priority: MEDIUM

Session Goal

The session aimed to facilitate student access to census data through BigQuery and set up an efficient email search system using MBOX files.

Key Activities

  1. BigQuery Instructions: Provided a guide for querying census data in BigQuery, including sample queries and troubleshooting tips.
  2. Public Access Setup: Outlined steps to grant public access to a BigQuery dataset for student use, including IAM permissions verification and modification.
  3. Testing Access: Verified the public access setup to ensure students can query the dataset.
  4. Email Format Understanding: Explained Gmail’s MBOX format and recommended converting it to a database for better analysis.
  5. Elasticsearch Setup: Provided a guide to set up Elasticsearch for fast email search using MBOX files.
  6. Troubleshooting: Addressed multiple issues related to the mbox-to-json tool, including import errors, installation issues, and command syntax.

Achievements

  • Successfully provided instructions and verified steps for granting public access to BigQuery datasets.
  • Set up a framework for converting MBOX files to Elasticsearch for efficient querying.
  • Resolved several troubleshooting issues related to the mbox-to-json tool.

Pending Tasks

  • Further testing of Elasticsearch setup with larger datasets.
  • Continuous monitoring of BigQuery dataset access by students.