> Since the full dataset is ~285GB, you only get 4 queries per month.

That's only true if your 4 queries need to read every single column.

One of the big advantages of BigQuery's column-oriented storage is that you only pay to read the columns that are actually needed to answer your query.

For example, this query to extract the top 10 authors only cost me 19GB to run (and took 7.0s):

  SELECT
    author,
    COUNT(*) AS COUNT
  FROM
    TABLE_QUERY([fh-bigquery:reddit_comments], "table_id CONTAINS '20' AND LENGTH(table_id)<8")
  GROUP EACH BY
    author
  ORDER BY
    COUNT DESC
  LIMIT
    10;

  author,COUNT
  [deleted],228425822
  AutoModerator,3677774
  conspirobot,575576
  ModerationLog,547671
  autowikibot,402076
  PoliticBot,388395
  imgurtranscriber,360248
  dogetipbot,358093
  qkme_transcriber,301968
  TweetPoster,293309

Good point.

Although if you're doing analysis on the body column itself, it'll use the majority proportion of the data set, of course.

I want all the url submissions in a given subreddit, but all I can find in the tables is "link_id". How do I map link_ids to urls?

There is no submission data yet.

/u/Stuck_in_the_Matrix commented on another thread that he's working on it.

Is this data in a format that allows to recover threads? I.e., comment X was a response to comment Y ?

parent_id is a column, so you could recreate hierarchy by JOINING a table on itself.