How to calculate Session and Session duration in Firebase Analytics raw data?

Question

How to calculate Session Duration in Firebase analytics raw data which is linked to BigQuery?

I have used the following blog to calculate the users by using the flatten command for the events which are nested within each record, but I would like to know how to proceed with in calculating the Session and Session duration by country and time.

(I have many apps configured, but if you could help me with the SQL query for calculating the session duration and session, It would be of immense help)

Google Blog on using Firebase and big query

Answer 1

First you need to define a session - in the following query I'm going to break a session whenever a user is inactive for more than 20 minutes.

Now, to find all sessions with SQL you can use a trick described at https://blog.modeanalytics.com/finding-user-sessions-sql/.

The following query finds all sessions and their lengths:

#standardSQL

SELECT app_instance_id, sess_id, MIN(min_time) sess_start, MAX(max_time) sess_end, COUNT(*) records, MAX(sess_id) OVER(PARTITION BY app_instance_id) total_sessions,
   (ROUND((MAX(max_time)-MIN(min_time))/(1000*1000),1)) sess_length_seconds
FROM (
  SELECT *, SUM(session_start) OVER(PARTITION BY app_instance_id ORDER BY min_time) sess_id
  FROM (
    SELECT *, IF(
                previous IS null 
                OR (min_time-previous)>(20*60*1000*1000),  # sessions broken by this inactivity 
                1, 0) session_start 
                #https://blog.modeanalytics.com/finding-user-sessions-sql/
    FROM (
      SELECT *, LAG(max_time, 1) OVER(PARTITION BY app_instance_id ORDER BY max_time) previous
      FROM (
        SELECT user_dim.app_info.app_instance_id
          , (SELECT MIN(timestamp_micros) FROM UNNEST(event_dim)) min_time
          , (SELECT MAX(timestamp_micros) FROM UNNEST(event_dim)) max_time
        FROM `firebase-analytics-sample-data.ios_dataset.app_events_20160601`
      )
    )
  )
)
GROUP BY 1, 2
ORDER BY 1, 2