Export Performance Monitoring data to BigQuery

You can export Performance Monitoring data from Apple and Android apps into BigQuery for further analysis. BigQuery allows you to analyze the data using BigQuery SQL, export it to another cloud provider, and even use the data for your custom ML models.

Enable BigQuery export

  1. Go to the Integrations page in the Firebase console, then click Link in the BigQuery card.

  2. Follow the on-screen instructions to enable BigQuery.

    When you enable BigQuery export for Performance Monitoring, the following occurs:

    • Firebase exports a copy of your existing data to BigQuery. The initial propagation of data for export may take up to 48 hours to complete.

    • After the dataset is created, the location can't be changed, but you can copy the dataset to a different location or manually move (recreate) the dataset in a different location. To learn more, see Change dataset location.

    • Firebase sets up regular syncs of your data from your Firebase project to BigQuery. These daily export operations usually finish in 24 hours after they are scheduled.

    • By default, all apps in your project are linked to BigQuery. Any apps that you later add to the project are automatically linked to BigQuery. You can manage which apps send data.

To deactivate BigQuery export, unlink your project in the Firebase console.

What data is exported to BigQuery?

For each app in the project, the export creates a table that includes all the captured performance events. Each row in the table is a single performance event that can be one of the following:

  • Duration trace — traces that collect, by default, the metric of "duration", which include app start, app-in-foreground, and app-in-background, as well as any developer-instrumented custom code traces

    • event_type is DURATION_TRACE
    • event_name is the same as the trace name
  • Trace metric — custom metrics that are associated with developer-instrumented custom code traces

    • event_type is TRACE_METRIC
    • event_name is the name of the metric
    • parent_trace_name is the trace name that contains this metric
  • Screen trace — traces spanning the lifetime of a screen (screen rendering traces)

    • event_type is SCREEN_TRACE
    • event_name is prefix _st_ plus the actual screen name
  • Network request — traces spanning the lifetime of a network request (HTTP network request traces)

    • event_type is NETWORK_REQUEST
    • event_name is the categorized pattern of the network request URL

Each performance event contains attributes of the event (such as country and carrier of the client device), as well as event-specific information:

  • Duration traces, trace metrics, and screen traces contain trace_info
  • Trace metrics contain trace_info.metric_info
  • Screen traces contain trace_info.screen_info
  • Network traces contain network_info

Detailed data schema

Field Name Type Description
event_timestamp timestamp Timestamp since Epoch when event started on client device (trace start, network start, etc.)
app_display_version string Display version of the application (for example, "4.1.7")
  • For Android — VersionName
  • For iOS — CFBundleShortVersionString
app_build_version string Build version of the application (for example, "1523456")
  • For Android — VersionCode
  • For iOS — CFBundleVersion
os_version string OS version of the client device
  • For Android — Android API level (for example "26")
  • For iOS — iOS version (for example "11.4")
device_name string Name of the client device (for example, "Google Pixel")
country string Two-letter country code of the country from which the event took place (for example, "US", or "ZZ" for unknown country)
carrier string Carrier of the client device
radio_type string Active radio type when the event took place (for example, "WIFI")
custom_attributes ARRAY<RECORD> All custom attributes attached to this event
custom_attributes.key string Key of the custom attribute
custom_attributes.value string Value of the custom attribute
event_type string Type of the event; possible values:
  • DURATION_TRACE — traces that collect, by default, the metric of "duration", which include app start, app-in-foreground, and app-in-background, as well as any developer-instrumented custom code traces
  • SCREEN_TRACE — traces spanning the lifetime of a screen (screen rendering traces)
  • TRACE_METRIC — custom metrics that are associated with developer-instrumented custom code traces
  • NETWORK_REQUEST — traces spanning the lifetime of a network request (HTTP network request traces)
event_name string Name of the event
  • For DURATION_TRACE — trace name
  • For TRACE_METRIC — custom metric name
  • For SCREEN_TRACE_st_ followed by the trace name
  • For NETWORK_REQUEST — network request URL pattern
parent_trace_name string Name of the parent trace that carries the trace metric
Only present for TRACE_METRIC
trace_info RECORD Only present for DURATION_TRACE, SCREEN_TRACE, and TRACE_METRIC
trace_info.duration_us int64
  • For DURATION_TRACE and SCREEN_TRACE — Length of time ("duration") from the beginning to the end of the trace
  • For TRACE_METRIC — length of time ("duration") from the beginning to the end of the parent trace
Unit: microsecond
trace_info.screen_info RECORD Only present for SCREEN_TRACE
trace_info.screen_info.slow_frame_ratio float64 Ratio of slow frames for this screen trace, between 0 and 1 (for example, a value of 0.05 means 5% of the frames for this screen instance took more than 16ms to render)
trace_info.screen_info.frozen_frame_ratio float64 Ratio of frozen frames for this screen trace, between 0 and 1 (for example, a value of 0.05 means 5% of the frames for this screen instance took more than 700ms to render)
trace_info.metric_info RECORD Only present for TRACE_METRIC
trace_info.metric_info.metric_value int64 Value of the trace metric
network_info RECORD Only present for NETWORK_REQUEST
network_info.response_code int64 HTTP response code for the network response (for example, 200, 404)
network_info.response_mime_type string MIME type of the network response (for example, "text/html")
network_info.request_http_method string HTTP method of the network request (for example, "GET" or "POST")
network_info.request_payload_bytes int64 Size of the network request payload
Unit: byte
network_info.response_payload_bytes int64 Size of the network response payload
Unit: byte
network_info.request_completed_time_us int64 Microseconds after event_timestamp when network request sending is complete
Unit: microsecond
network_info.response_initiated_time_us int64 Microseconds after event_timestamp when network response is initiated
Unit: microsecond
network_info.response_completed_time_us int64 Microseconds after event_timestamp when network response is completed
Unit: microsecond

What can you do with the exported data?

The following sections offer examples of queries that you can run in BigQuery against your exported Performance Monitoring data.

View average app start latency break-down by country

SELECT AVG(trace_info.duration_us), country
FROM `TABLE_NAME`
WHERE _PARTITIONTIME > TIMESTAMP("YYYY-MM-DD")
AND event_type = "DURATION_TRACE"
AND event_name = "_app_start"
GROUP BY 2;

Check the ratio of frozen frames against various conditions

For example, you can check the ratio of frozen frames alongside the amount of time users spend on each screen of your app when on different radio types (WiFi, 4G, etc.).

SELECT
  AVG(trace_info.duration_us / 1000000) AS seconds_on_screen,
  AVG(trace_info.screen_info.frozen_frame_ratio) AS frozen_frame_ratio,
  event_name,
  radio_type
FROM `TABLE_NAME`
WHERE _PARTITIONTIME > TIMESTAMP("YYYY-MM-DD")
AND event_type = "SCREEN_TRACE"
GROUP BY event_name, radio_type
ORDER BY event_name, radio_type;

Compute cache hit rate for loading certain types of files from disk

This analysis assumes that you instrumented a custom code trace for loading from disk with a custom attribute named file-extension and a custom metric (a TRACE_METRIC) named cache-hit that is set to 1 if cache hit and 0 if cache miss.

For example, you can compute the cache hit rate for loading PNG files from disk:

SELECT AVG(trace_info.metric_info.metric_value) AS cache_hit_rate
FROM `TABLE_NAME`
WHERE _PARTITIONTIME > TIMESTAMP("YYYY-MM-DD")
AND event_type = "TRACE_METRIC"
AND event_name = "cache-hit"
AND parent_trace_name = "loadFromDisk"
AND STRUCT("file-extension", "png") IN UNNEST(custom_attributes);

Check for the time of day that users issue network requests

For example, you can check at what hour of the day users from the United States issue network requests from your app:

SELECT
  count(1) AS hourly_count,
  EXTRACT(HOUR FROM event_timestamp) AS hour_of_day
FROM `TABLE_NAME`
WHERE _PARTITIONTIME > TIMESTAMP("YYYY-MM-DD")
AND event_type = "NETWORK_REQUEST"
AND country = "US"
GROUP BY 2 ORDER BY 2;

Take your Performance Monitoring data anywhere

Sometimes you want to access your Performance Monitoring data server-side or push it to another third-party solution. There is currently no charge for exporting data.

You can export your data by:

  • Using the BigQuery web UI

  • Running the CLI command bq extract

  • Submitting an extract job via the API or client libraries.

Pricing

There is no charge for exporting data from Performance Monitoring, and BigQuery provides generous no-cost usage limits. For detailed information, refer to BigQuery pricing or the BigQuery sandbox.