Looker
Looker is a business intelligence software and big data analytics platform that helps you explore, analyze, and share real-time business analytics easily. Looker is a web-based application and connects to Exasol using JDBC.
Prerequisite
- Ensure right permissions are provided to users to access Exasol. For more information, refer to Exasol section in the Looker documentation.
- Exasol database running.
Connect Looker to Exasol
Follow these steps to create a connection to Exasol on Looker:
- Open Looker in your browser using the Looker URL for your organization and login with your credentials. The Looker landing page is displayed, as shown below.
- From the top panel, click Admin and under Database, select Connections.
- In the Connections screen, click New Connection to add a new connection.
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At the top of the New Connection screen, you have two options to configure the connection. Select the option Existing Database to configure a Looker connection to a current database or select the option New Database to create, connect, and download your data into a new Looker database. In this guide, we have chosen the option Existing Database.
- Enter the connection details for the following fields in the New Connection screen:
- Name: Name to identify the connection.
- Dialect: Choose Exasol from the drop-down list.
- Host:Port: The database hostname and port number that Looker should use to connect to your database.
- Database: Your Exasol database name.
- Username: Enter the user name to connect to the database.
- Password: Enter the password to connect to the database.
- Schema: The default schema Looker must use.
- Persistent Derived Tables: Select this checkbox to enable persistent derived tables. This reveals the Temp Database, which is a dedicated schema in the database to store persistent derived tables.
- Temp Database: Schema name Looker must use to create persistent derived tables (for example, LOOKER_SCRATCH).
- Additional Params: You can include additional Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) parameters for your queries here if needed.
- PDT and Datagroup Maintenance Schedule: You can provide a Cron expression that indicates Looker on how often should a check for datagroups and Persistent Derived Tables be regenerated or dropped. The default value is */5****, which means 'check every 5 minutes', and this is the maximum frequency of checks.
- SSL: Choose whether or not you want to use SSL encryption to protect data.
- Max Connections: Set the maximum number of connections that Looker can establish with your database.
- Connection Pool Timeout: Enter the maximum amount of time a request will wait before the connection times out.
- SQL Runner Precache: Select the checkbox to pre-cache table. This allows all table information to be pre-loaded as soon as you select a connection and schema, and faster display of table columns when you click on a table name.
- To test the connection to Exasol, click Test These Settings.
- To save the connection, click Add Connection.
View Connection
Once you have configured the Looker connection, you can view the connection on the Connections screen as shown below:
Once you have configured the connection to Exasol, you can next create dashboards and reports. For more information on how to create dashboards, see Looker Documentation.
See Also:
For additional information on Looker, see Looker Documentation.