# How manage required column filters in Holistics

**URL:** <https://community.holistics.io/t/how-manage-required-column-filters-in-holistics/1355>\
**Category:** Ask the Community\
**Tags:** bigquery, filters\
**Created:** [December 28, 2022, 1:10pm UTC](https://community.holistics.io/t/how-manage-required-column-filters-in-holistics/1355 "2022-12-28T13:10:04Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Chris](https://community.holistics.io/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/958977/32.png) [@Chris](https://community.holistics.io/u/Chris)\
**Post date:** [December 28, 2022, 1:10pm UTC](https://community.holistics.io/t/how-manage-required-column-filters-in-holistics/1355/1 "2022-12-28T13:10:04Z")

</div>

Hi,

Some of the tables I’m working in are fairly large and it is reasonable to have required filters for columns such as ‘created\_at’ to avoid querying a full table. I’ve come across two problems in Holistics when using required column filters in BigQuery tables:

- When I use a Holistics Dataset based on a table with req filters the underlying query fails unless a condition on the required filter column is manually set. This is confusing for colleagues without SQL experience. A Dataset-level default filter on columns would fix this (Google Looker’s approach)

- If the user wants to set specific conditions in the Dataset then Holistics tries to present search suggestions for the end user - this functionality fails since it’s missing required filters in the query that runs in the background. The user must switch to ‘contains’ as a work around.

At the moment all required column filters have been temporarily removed to facilitate for the end user.

What are potential work-arounds if I want to keep the required column filters in BigQuery and work around the issues described above?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![di.hoang](https://community.holistics.io/user_avatar/community.holistics.io/di.hoang/32/421_2.png) [@di.hoang](https://community.holistics.io/u/di.hoang)\
**Post date:** [January 12, 2023, 5:29am UTC](https://community.holistics.io/t/how-manage-required-column-filters-in-holistics/1355/2 "2023-01-12T05:29:53Z")

</div>

Sorry for the late reply @Chris

As far as I understand:

- You have a dataset that is created from a large BQ table; thus, it normally loads very long when a user explores data from it. Secondly, our filter suggestions also often fails because of the large data table.
- You believe that **ability to add a default filter to this dataset** will help solve this case. But since we haven’t supported it yet, you want to know if there is any workaround for those issues.

Please let me know if I misunderstood anything.  
If it’s your case, I suggest you to create a [transform model](https://docs.holistics.io/docs/transform-models) from this BQ table and filter out data at modeling layer. Then, create a new dataset from those transform models instead of the original table models. It would help reduce the loading time when a user explores your dataset.

Would you mind checking if it can solve your issue?