Looker dialects

Looker supports a wide range of SQL database dialects and continues to improve the feature implementations for existing dialect options as well as add new dialects. Because our modeling layer, LookML, builds on top of the in-database features available, some dialects allow for a more powerful implementation than others.

Support levels and JDBC installation

Looker has two support levels for dialects based on a dialect's built-in feature set and the level of demand by Looker users:

  • Supported: A dialect that is fully supported by Looker. Looker is committed to improving this dialect implementation and will fix issues based on severity and demand. Looker runs exhaustive tests against this dialect at least weekly to ensure quality.

  • Integration: A dialect that is partially supported. Looker is able to connect to this dialect, but there are no commitments to improve implementation, fix issues, or regularly run tests against the dialect.

For the dialects whose value of JDBC Driver Included? is No, the needed JDBC JAR file is not bundled with the Looker JAR files. For customer-hosted installations of Looker, you must configure the driver for use with Looker as described on the Unpackaged JDBC drivers documentation page.

Looker (original) supports the following SQL dialects as of Looker 24.2:

Dialect Support Level JDBC Driver Included?
Actian Avalanche
Supported
No
Amazon Athena
Supported
Yes
Amazon Aurora MySQL
Supported
Yes
Amazon Redshift
Supported
Yes
Apache Druid
Supported
Yes
Apache Druid 0.13+
Supported
Yes
Apache Druid 0.18+
Supported
Yes
Apache Hive 2.3+
Integration
Yes
Apache Hive 3.1.2+
Supported
Yes
Apache Spark 3+
Supported
Yes
ClickHouse
Supported
Yes
Cloudera Impala 3.1+
Supported
Yes
Cloudera Impala 3.1+ with Native Driver
Supported
No
Cloudera Impala with Native Driver
Supported
No
DataVirtuality
Supported
No
Databricks
Supported
Yes
Denodo 7
Supported
Yes
Denodo 8
Supported
Yes
Dremio
Supported
Yes
Dremio 11+
Supported
Yes
Exasol
Supported
Yes
Firebolt
Supported
Yes
Google BigQuery Legacy SQL
Supported
Yes
Google BigQuery Standard SQL
Supported
Yes
Google Cloud PostgreSQL
Supported
Yes
Google Cloud SQL
Supported
Yes
Google Spanner
Supported
Yes
Greenplum
Supported
Yes
HyperSQL
Integration
Yes
IBM Netezza
Supported
Yes
MariaDB
Supported
Yes
Microsoft Azure PostgreSQL
Supported
Yes
Microsoft Azure SQL Database
Supported
Yes
Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics
Supported
Yes
Microsoft SQL Server 2008+
Integration
Yes
Microsoft SQL Server 2012+
Integration
Yes
Microsoft SQL Server 2016
Supported
Yes
Microsoft SQL Server 2017+
Supported
Yes
MongoBI
Supported
No
MySQL
Supported
Yes
MySQL 8.0.12+
Supported
Yes
Oracle
Supported
Yes
Oracle ADWC
Integration
Yes
PostgreSQL 9.5+
Supported
Yes
PostgreSQL pre-9.5
Integration
Yes
PrestoDB
Supported
Yes
PrestoSQL
Supported
Yes
SAP HANA
Supported
Yes
SAP HANA 2+
Supported
Yes
SingleStore
Supported
Yes
SingleStore 7+
Supported
Yes
Snowflake
Supported
Yes
Teradata
Supported
No
Trino
Supported
Yes
Vector
Supported
No
Vertica
Supported
Yes

Database configuration instructions

Instructions are available for these SQL dialects:

Looker does not support new connections for the following dialects. Existing connections will continue to function as expected. For Looker instances with existing connections to these dialects, the following links to documentation are provided for reference:

Looker also connects with the following dialects. Reach out to your Looker contact for assistance.

  • IBM Netezza

Next steps

After you configure your database to work with Looker, you're ready to connect Looker to your database.