PrestoDB and Trino

This pages discusses how to connect Looker to PrestoDB or Trino.

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.

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: Select PrestoDB or Trino.

    PrestoSQL has been rebranded as Trino. If you're using a Trino version earlier than 352, select PrestoSQL from the Looker dialect menu.

  • Host: The database hostname.

  • Port: The database port. The default port is 8080.

  • Database: The "catalog" or "connector," in Presto terms.

  • Username: The username of the user who will run queries.

    This information is only sent to the database server if SSL is enabled.

  • Password: Password for the user who will run queries.

    This information is only sent to the database server if SSL is enabled.

  • Schema: The default schema to use when no schema is specified.

  • Authentication: Select Database Account or OAuth:

    • Use Database Account to specify the Username and Password of the database user account that will be used to connect to Looker.
    • Use OAuth if you want to configure OAuth for the connection.

  • Enable PDTs: Use this toggle to enable persistent derived tables (PDTs). This reveals additional PDT fields and the PDT Overrides section for the connection.

  • Temp Database: The schema to write PDTs. (Version 3.50 added PDT support to Presto. See the Configuring PrestoDB or Trino for PDTs section on this page for more information about how to configure Presto for PDT support.)

  • Additional JDBC parameters: Any additional parameters from the PrestoDB JDBC driver, Trino JDBC driver, or Starburst JDBC driver.

  • SSL: Check to enable SSL connections.

  • Verify SSL: Ignore this field. All SSL connections will use the default Java Truststore unless directed to do otherwise with PrestoDB JDBC parameters, the Trino JDBC driver, or the Starburst JDBC driver. Enter these parameters in the Additional JDBC parameters field.

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.

For more information about connection settings, see the Connecting Looker to your database documentation page.

Configuring PrestoDB or Trino for PDTs

PDTs are not supported for connections that use OAuth.

PDT support depends on the connector that you're using with PrestoDB or Trino . This section explains the necessary configuration settings for a scratch database. This example assumes the connector you are using is hive.

The Hive catalog properties file should contain a few configuration properties, which are described in this section.

The following is required because Presto caches the Hive metastore results, and Looker needs to be able to see the tables right away:

hive.metastore-cache-ttl = 0s

These two properties are required because Looker needs to be able to drop and rename PDTs:

hive.allow-rename-table=true
hive.allow-drop-table=true

For reference, in our internal Presto testing servers we use the following hive.properties file, which is used for all Hive schemas:

hive.s3.connect-timeout=1m
hive.s3.max-backoff-time=10m
hive.s3.max-error-retries=50
hive.metastore-cache-ttl = 0s
hive.metastore-refresh-interval = 5s
hive.s3.max-connections=500
hive.s3.max-client-retries=50
connector.name=hive-hadoop2
hive.s3.socket-timeout=2m
hive.s3.staging-directory=/mnt/tmp/
hive.s3.use-instance-credentials=true
hive.config.resources=/etc/hadoop/conf/core-site.xml,/etc/hadoop/conf/hdfs-site.xml
hive.parquet.use-column-names=true
hive.allow-drop-table=true
hive.metastore.uri=thrift://<metastore-server>:9083
hive.storage-format=ORC
hive.allow-rename-table=true

Configuring OAuth for Trino connections

Looker supports OAuth for Trino connections, meaning that each Looker user authenticates in to the database and authorizes Looker to run queries on the database with their own OAuth user account.

OAuth lets database administrators perform the following tasks:

  • Audit which Looker users are running queries against the database
  • Enforce role-based access controls using database-level permissions
  • Use OAuth tokens for all processes and actions that access the database, instead of embedding database IDs and passwords in multiple places
  • Revoke authorization for a given user through the database directly

With Trino connections that use OAuth, users must sign in again periodically when their OAuth tokens expire.

Note the following for database-level OAuth connections:

  • If a user lets their OAuth token expire, any schedules or alerts that they own will be affected. To guard against this, Looker will send a notification email to the owner of each schedule and each alert before the current active OAuth token expires. Looker will send these notifications emails 14 days, 7 days, and 1 day before the token expires. The user can go to their Looker user page to reauthorize Looker to the database and avoid any interruption to their schedules and alerts. See the Personalizing user account settings documentation page for details.
  • Because database connections that use OAuth are "per user," caching policies are also per user and not just per query. This means that, instead of using cached results whenever the same query is run within the caching period, Looker will use cached results only if the same user has run the same query within the caching period. For further information on caching, see the Caching queries documentation page.
  • Persistent derived tables (PDTs) are not supported for Trino connections with OAuth.
  • When a Looker admin sudos as another user, the admin will use that user's OAuth access token. If the user's access token is expired, the admin cannot create a new token on behalf of the sudoed user. See the Users documentation page for information on using the sudo command.
  • When signing into Azure AD from Looker using OAuth, Looker doesn't display an explicit user consent dialog. By setting up OAuth with Looker, you implicitly consent to your Looker instance accessing your Trino data.

Registering an application

To enable OAuth for Trino, first register an application using a supported identity provider. Looker only supports Microsoft Entra ID (formerly known as Azure AD) for OAuth with Trino.

Prerequisites

  • You must have an Azure subscription.
  • You must have administrative permissions in Microsoft Entra ID.

To register an application, follow these steps:

  1. Go to the Azure Portal and sign in with your credentials.
  2. In the Azure Portal search bar, search for "Microsoft Entra ID" and select it from the results.
  3. In the Microsoft Entra ID service, click New registration in the App registrations section of the Manage category.
  4. Fill out the registration form as follows:
    • Name: Provide a descriptive name for the application, such as Looker Trino Connection.
    • Supported account types: Select the appropriate option based on how you want to restrict access. For an internal use case, you might select Accounts in this organizational directory only.
    • Redirect URI: Select the Web platform, and then enter your Looker redirect URI. It should look like https://YOUR_LOOKER_HOSTNAME/external_oath/redirect.
  5. Click Register.
  6. Gather the Client ID, Tenant ID, and Client Secret to enter into your Looker connection later.
    • You can find the Client ID and Tenant ID on the Overview page.
    • If you don't know your Client Secret, you'll need to to create a new one. Click Certificates & secrets in the Manage section, and then click New client secret.
  7. Click Expose an API in the Manage section.
  8. Next to Application ID URI, click Add.
  9. Enter your Client ID. It should be in the following format: api://CLIENT_ID.

Next, follow these steps in the Azure Portal to create a new scope to use with Looker:

  1. Click Add a scope in the Scopes defined by this API section.

  2. Add a Scope Name for the new scope. Looker expects that your scope name will be: TrinoUsers.Read.All.

    The name TrinoUsers.Read.All implies read-only permissions, but the name itself doesn't actually set or enforce any permissions. Make sure you set up the scope to only allow read access to your database.

  3. Add a Display name and Description.

  4. In the Who can consent? selector, select Admins and users.

  5. Click Add scope.

  6. In the Authorized client applications section, click Add a client application.

  7. Enter your Client ID and your newly created scope.

  8. Click Add application.

Next, to grant Looker the necessary API permissions, follow these steps:

  1. In the Manage section, click API Permissions.
  2. Click Add a permission.
  3. Select the My APIs tab at the top.
  4. In the list of app registrations, select the registration that you just created, such as Looker Trino Connection.
  5. Select the Delegated permissions checkbox.
  6. Select the TrinoUsers.Read.All checkbox.
  7. Select Add permission.

Configuring the database to use OAuth

Next, to configure your Trino database to use OAuth, add the following lines to your Trino config.properties file. (Replace the first five lines of capitalized variables with your own values.)

  • YOUR_HTTPS_PORT
  • PATH_TO_YOUR_SSL_CERTIFICATE
  • YOUR_TENANT_ID
  • YOUR_CLIENT_ID
  • YOUR_SHARED_SECRET
# enable SSL for OAuth
http-server.https.enabled=true
http-server.https.port=YOUR_HTTPS_PORT
http-server.https.keystore.path=PATH_TO_YOUR_SSL_CERTIFICATE

# enable OAuth 2.0
http-server.authentication.type=oauth2
http-server.authentication.oauth2.issuer=https://sts.windows.net/YOUR_TENANT_ID/
http-server.authentication.oauth2.client-id=NA_required_but_not_used
http-server.authentication.oauth2.client-secret=NA_required_but_not_used

# turn off oidc discovery - Trino will inspect tokens locally instead
http-server.authentication.oauth2.oidc.discovery=false

# URLs that Trino requires for OAuth
http-server.authentication.oauth2.jwks-url=https://login.microsoftonline.com/common/discovery/v2.0/keys
http-server.authentication.oauth2.auth-url=NA_required_but_not_used
http-server.authentication.oauth2.token-url=NA_required_but_not_used

# add audience that matches the Azure AD's Application ID URI
http-server.authentication.oauth2.additional-audiences=api://YOUR_CLIENT_ID

# set shared-secret required for internal Trino communication when authentication is enabled, see: https://github.com/trinodb/trino/issues/12397
# can be generated with the following Linux command: openssl rand 512 | base64
internal-communication.shared-secret=YOUR_SHARED_SECRET

# optionally, allow some insecure http traffic
# http-server.authentication.allow-insecure-over-http=true

Signing in to run queries

Once the database connection is set up to use OAuth, users will be prompted to sign in to Microsoft Entra ID before running queries. This includes queries from Explores, dashboards, Looks, and SQL Runner.

Users can also sign in to Microsoft Entra ID from the OAuth Connection Credentials section on their Account page.

To sign in to Microsoft Entra ID using Looker:

  1. Click the Looker user menu.
  2. Select Account.
  3. On the Account page, click Log In in the OAuth Connection Credentials section.

This action will display a login dialog. Enter your Microsoft Entra ID credentials and select Log In to grant Looker access to your database account.

Once you sign in to Microsoft Entra ID through Looker, you can log out or reauthorize your credentials at any time through your Account page, as described on the Personalizing your user account documentation page.

Reference

For more information about configuring your Hive connector, see PrestoDB Hive Connector, Trino Hive Connector, or Starburst Hive Connector.

Feature support

For Looker to support some features, your database dialect must also support them.

PrestoDB supports the following features as of Looker 24.16:

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
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
No
SQL Runner Show Processes
Yes
SQL Runner Describe Table
Yes
SQL Runner Show Indexes
No
SQL Runner Select 10
Yes
SQL Runner Count
Yes
SQL Explain
Yes
Oauth Credentials
No
Context Comments
Yes
Connection Pooling
No
HLL Sketches
Yes
Aggregate Awareness
Yes
Incremental PDTs
No
Milliseconds
Yes
Microseconds
No
Materialized Views
No
Approximate Count Distinct
Yes

Trino supports the following features as of Looker 24.16:

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
Yes
Stable Views
No
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
No
SQL Runner Show Processes
Yes
SQL Runner Describe Table
Yes
SQL Runner Show Indexes
No
SQL Runner Select 10
Yes
SQL Runner Count
Yes
SQL Explain
Yes
Oauth Credentials
Yes
Context Comments
Yes
Connection Pooling
No
HLL Sketches
Yes
Aggregate Awareness
Yes
Incremental PDTs
No
Milliseconds
Yes
Microseconds
No
Materialized Views
No
Approximate Count Distinct
Yes

Next steps

After you have connected your database to Looker, configure sign-in options for your users.