Encrypting network traffic
It is a best practice to encrypt network traffic between the Looker application and your database. Consider one of the options described on the Enabling secure database access documentation page.
Users and security
Create a database user that can connect Google Cloud SQL for MySQL to Looker. In the following commands, change some_password_here to a unique, secure password, and grant SELECT privileges to the database you want Looker to query:
CREATE USER looker;
SET PASSWORD FOR looker = PASSWORD ('some_password_here');
GRANT SELECT ON database_name.* TO looker;
Creating the Looker connection to your database
In the Admin section of Looker, select Connections, and then click Add Connection.
Fill out the connection details. The majority of the settings are common to most database dialects. See the Connecting Looker to your database documentation page for information. Some of the settings are described next:
- Dialect: Google Cloud SQL.
- Host: The database hostname used to connect to the Google Cloud SQL for MySQL database. For an SSH tunnel, use
localhost. - Port: The port used to connect to the Google Cloud SQL for MySQL database.
- Database: The name of the Google Cloud SQL for MySQL database instance.
- Username: The username of the account Looker will use to log in to Google Cloud SQL for MySQL.
- Password: The password of the account Looker will use to log in to Google Cloud SQL for MySQL.
- Additional JDBC parameters: Additional JDBC parameters (optional).
SSL: If checked, enables an SSL connection; however, SSL connections to Google Cloud SQL for MySQL are not supported by default.
Verify SSL: If checked, SSL verification is enforced. However, SSL connections to Google Cloud are not supported by default.
To verify that the connection is successful, click Test. See the Testing database connectivity documentation page for troubleshooting information.
To save these settings, click Connect.
PDT support
Google Cloud SQL for MySQL does not support CREATE TABLE AS SELECT statements, so you must use the create_process LookML parameter to define PDTs.
Feature support
For Looker to support some features, your database dialect must also support them.
Google Cloud SQL supports the following features as of Looker 24.6:
| Feature | Supported? |
|---|---|
| Support Level | Supported |
| Looker (Google Cloud core) | Yes |
| Symmetric Aggregates | Yes |
| Derived Tables | Yes |
| Persistent SQL Derived Tables | Yes |
| Persistent Native Derived Tables | No |
| Stable Views | No |
| Query Killing | Yes |
| SQL-based Pivots | Yes |
| Timezones | Yes |
| SSL | Yes |
| Subtotals | Yes |
| JDBC Additional Params | Yes |
| Case Sensitive | No |
| Location Type | Yes |
| List Type | Yes |
| Percentile | Yes |
| Distinct Percentile | Yes |
| SQL Runner Show Processes | Yes |
| SQL Runner Describe Table | Yes |
| SQL Runner Show Indexes | Yes |
| SQL Runner Select 10 | Yes |
| SQL Runner Count | Yes |
| SQL Explain | Yes |
| Oauth Credentials | No |
| Context Comments | Yes |
| Connection Pooling | No |
| HLL Sketches | No |
| Aggregate Awareness | No |
| Incremental PDTs | No |
| Milliseconds | Yes |
| Microseconds | Yes |
| Materialized Views | No |
| Approximate Count Distinct | No |
Next steps
After you have created your database connection, set authentication options.