Encrypting network traffic
Looker strongly recommends encrypting network traffic between the Looker application and your database. Consider one of the options described on the Enabling secure database access documentation page.
If you're interested in using SSL encryption, see this official Greenplum security configuration guide.
Users and security
Change some_password_here to a unique, secure password:
CREATE USER looker WITH ENCRYPTED PASSWORD 'password';
GRANT CONNECT ON DATABASE database_name to looker;
\c database_name
GRANT SELECT ON ALL SEQUENCES IN SCHEMA public TO looker;
GRANT SELECT ON ALL TABLES IN SCHEMA public TO looker;
To grant Looker the necessary permissions to cancel its queries, run:
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION pg_kill_connection(integer) RETURNS boolean AS 'select pg_terminate_backend($1);' LANGUAGE SQL SECURITY DEFINER;
Temp schema setup
Create a schema owned by the Looker user:
CREATE SCHEMA looker_scratch AUTHORIZATION looker;
Feature support
For Looker to support some features, your database dialect must also support them.
Greenplum supports the following features as of Looker 23.18:
| Feature | Supported? |
|---|---|
| Support Level | Supported |
| Looker (Google Cloud core) | No |
| Symmetric Aggregates | Yes |
| Derived Tables | Yes |
| Persistent SQL Derived Tables | Yes |
| Persistent Native Derived Tables | Yes |
| Stable Views | Yes |
| Query Killing | Yes |
| SQL-based Pivots | Yes |
| Timezones | Yes |
| SSL | Yes |
| Subtotals | Yes |
| JDBC Additional Params | Yes |
| Case Sensitive | Yes |
| 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 | Yes |
| HLL Sketches | No |
| Aggregate Awareness | Yes |
| Incremental PDTs | Yes |
| Milliseconds | Yes |
| Microseconds | Yes |
| Materialized Views | No |
| Approximate Count Distinct | No |
Next steps
After completing the database configuration, you can connect to the database from Looker using these directions.