Bigquery Select all latest partitions from a wildcard set of tables - sql

Question

We have a set of Google BigQuery tables which are all distinguished by a wildcard for technical reasons, for example content_owner_asset_metadata_*. These tables are updated daily, but at different times.
We need to select the latest partition from each table in the wildcard.
Right now we are using this query to build our derived tables:
SELECT
*
FROM
`project.content_owner_asset_metadata_*`
WHERE
_PARTITIONTIME = (
SELECT
MIN(time)
FROM (
SELECT
MAX(_PARTITIONTIME) as time
FROM
`project.content_owner_asset_metadata_*`
WHERE
_PARTITIONTIME > TIMESTAMP_SUB(CURRENT_TIMESTAMP(), INTERVAL 7 DAY)
)
)
This statement finds out the date that all the up-to-date tables are guarenteed to have and selects that date's data, however I need a filter that selects the data from the maximum partition time of each table. I know that I'd need to use _TABLE_SUFFIX with _PARTITIONTIME, but cannot quite work out how to make a select work without just loading all our data (very costly) and using a standard greatest-n-per-group solution.
We cannot just union a bunch of static tables, as our dataset ingestion is liable to change and the scripts we build need to be able to accomodate.

Answer 1

With BigQuery scripting (Beta now), there is a way to prune the partitions.
Basically, a scripting variable is defined to capture the dynamic part of a subquery. Then in subsequent query, scripting variable is used as a filter to prune the partitions to be scanned.
Below example uses BigQuery public dataset to demonstrate how to prune partition to only query and scan on latest day of data.
DECLARE max_date TIMESTAMP
DEFAULT (SELECT MAX(_PARTITIONTIME) FROM `bigquery-public-data.sec_quarterly_financials.numbers`);
SELECT * FROM `bigquery-public-data.sec_quarterly_financials.numbers`
WHERE _PARTITIONTIME = max_date;

Answer 2

With INFORMATION_SCHEMA.PARTITIONS (preview) as of posting, this can be achieved by joining to the PARTITIONS table as follows (e.g. with HOUR partitioning):
SELECT i.*
FROM `project.dataset.prefix_*` i
JOIN (
SELECT * EXCEPT (r)
FROM (
SELECT *,
ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY table_name ORDER BY partition_id DESC) AS r
FROM `project.dataset.INFORMATION_SCHEMA.PARTITIONS`
WHERE table_name LIKE "%prefix%"
AND partition_id NOT IN ("__NULL__", "__UNPARTITIONED__"))
WHERE r = 1) p
ON (FORMAT_TIMESTAMP("%Y%m%d%H", i._PARTITIONTIME) = p.partition_id
AND CONCAT("prefix_", i._TABLE_SUFFIX) = p.table_name)