To get the most out of this book

To successfully follow the examples in this book, you need a GCP account and project. If, at this point, you don't have a GCP account and project, don't worry. We will cover that as part of the exercises in this book.

Occasionally, we will use the free tier from GCP for practice, but be aware that some products might not have free tiers. Notes will be provided if this is the case.

All the exercises in this book can be completed without any additional software installation. The exercises will be done in the GCP console that you can open from any operating system using your favorite browser.

You should be familiar with basic programming languages. In this book, I will focus on utilizing Python and the Linux command line.

If you are using the digital version of this book, we advise you to type the code yourself or access the code from the book's GitHub repository (a link is available in the next section). Doing so will help you avoid any potential errors related to the copying and pasting of code.

This book is not positioned to replace GCP public documentation. Hence, comprehensive information on every single feature of GCP services might not be available in this book. We also won't use all the GCP services that are available. For such information, you can always check the public documentation.

Remember that the main goal of this book is to help you narrow down information. Use this book as your step-by-step guide to build solutions to common challenges facing data engineers. Follow the patterns from the exercises, the relationship between concepts, important GCP services, and best practices. Always use the hands-on exercises so you can experience working with GCP.