Looker

Prerequisites

• Your Exasol database must be running and reachable from the environment where the tool is used.

• The Exasol JDBC driver must be installed. To learn more, see JDBC driver.

Create a database user

1. In the Exasol database, create a designated user for Looker and grant the user the permission to create sessions, and the appropriate permissions on the tables or schema that Looker will use.

   Example:

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   CREATE USER LOOKER IDENTIFIED BY "<password>";
   GRANT CREATE SESSION TO LOOKER;
   GRANT SELECT ON <tables> TO LOOKER;
   // or
   GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON SCHEMA <MY_SCHEMA> TO LOOKER;

2. A persistent derived table (PDT) is a derived table that is written to a scratch schema on your database and regenerated by a scheduled cron job. If you are planning to use PDTs in the Looker connection, create a designated schema for this purpose and grant all privileges on this schema to the Looker user.

   Example:

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   CREATE SCHEMA LOOKER_SCRATCH;
   ALTER SCHEMA LOOKER_SCRATCH CHANGE OWNER LOOKER;

   To learn more about persistent derived tables (PDTs), refer to the Looker documentation.

Connect Looker to Exasol

In Looker, create a new database connection with the following properties:

• Dialect: Exasol

• Host:Port: The URL for Exasol database.

  To learn about supported URL structures for the JDBC driver, see Exasol URL.

  For Exasol SaaS, use the connection string provided in the web console as hostname.

• Database: The name of the Exasol database.

• Username: The username for the Looker user in the Exasol database.

• Password: The password for the user.

  For Exasol SaaS, use a valid personal access token as password.

• Schema: The schema that Looker will use in your database.

• Persistent Derived Tables: Enables persistent derived tables (PDTs).

• Temp Database: The schema that Looker will use for persistent derived tables (PDTs). This parameter is required if the PDT option is enabled.

• Additional Params: You can include additional JDBC parameters for your queries here if needed.

• PDT and Datagroup Maintenance Schedule: You can provide a cron expression that tells Looker how often it should check for datagroups and persistent derived tables (PDTs) to be regenerated or dropped. The default value is */5**** (check every 5 minutes).

• SSL: Choose whether or not you want to use SSL encryption to protect data.

• Max Connections: The maximum number of connections that Looker can establish with your database.

• Connection Pool Timeout: The time in seconds that a request will wait before the connection times out.

• SQL Runner Precache: If enabled, all table information is pre-loaded when you select a connection and schema. This allows table columns to be displayed faster when you click on a table name.