Actian Avalanche and Vector

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To use Looker with Actian Avalanche or Vector you will need to configure an Ingres driver. These instructions describe that process, assuming use of a startup script similar to the examples provided on this Looker GitHub page.

You will need to acquire an Ingres driver JAR, include it as part of the startup process, and add an option to tell Looker to access it.

Installing the Ingres JDBC driver

Follow the steps on the Unpackaged JDBC drivers documentation page using the following values:

driver symbol: ingres

driver entry:

- name: ingres
  dir_name: ingres
  module_path: com.ingres.jdbc.IngresDriver

For the step to put the driver in your dialect's directory, the path to this file will look like this: looker/custom_jdbc_drivers/ingres/iijdbc.jar.

Connecting Looker to Actian Avalanche or Vector

Configure a database connection via the Looker interface. From the Admin section, select Connections, then click Add Connection. See the Connecting Looker to your database documentation page for more information.

Click on Test These Settings to verify the connection is successful. The Testing database connectivity documentation page has troubleshooting information.

Enabling PDT support

It is possible to enable persistent derived tables (PDTs) using the PDT Overrides column in the Connection Settings page.

To enable PDTs:

  1. Create a PDT user in your database for use with the scratch schema, for example looker_scratch.

  2. Create a group in your database such as looker_pdt_group.

  3. Add both the regular Looker user and the Looker PDT user to the new group.

  4. GRANT SELECT on all tables in the regular Looker user's schema to the PDT user.

  5. In Looker's Connection Settings page, in the PDT Overrides column, enter the PDT user information.

  6. The PDT user then runs a GRANT SELECT to the looker_pdt_group for every table it creates.

Feature support

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

Actian Avalanche

Actian Avalanche supports the following features as of Looker 23.4:

Feature Supported?
Support Level
Supported
Symmetric Aggregates
Yes
Derived Tables
Yes
Persistent SQL Derived Tables
Yes
Persistent Native Derived Tables
Yes
Stable Views
Yes
Query Killing
Yes
Pivots
Yes
Timezones
No
SSL
No
Subtotals
No
JDBC Additional Params
Yes
Case Sensitive
Yes
Location Type
Yes
List Type
Yes
Percentile
No
Distinct Percentile
No
SQL Runner Show Processes
No
SQL Runner Describe Table
Yes
SQL Runner Show Indexes
Yes
SQL Runner Select 10
Yes
SQL Runner Count
Yes
SQL Explain
No
Oauth Credentials
No
Context Comments
Yes
Connection Pooling
No
HLL Sketches
No
Aggregate Awareness
Yes
Incremental PDTs
No
Milliseconds
Yes
Microseconds
Yes
Materialized Views
No
Approximate Count Distinct
No

Vector

Vector supports the following features as of Looker 23.4:

Feature Supported?
Support Level
Supported
Symmetric Aggregates
Yes
Derived Tables
Yes
Persistent SQL Derived Tables
Yes
Persistent Native Derived Tables
Yes
Stable Views
Yes
Query Killing
Yes
Pivots
Yes
Timezones
No
SSL
No
Subtotals
No
JDBC Additional Params
Yes
Case Sensitive
Yes
Location Type
Yes
List Type
Yes
Percentile
No
Distinct Percentile
No
SQL Runner Show Processes
No
SQL Runner Describe Table
Yes
SQL Runner Show Indexes
Yes
SQL Runner Select 10
Yes
SQL Runner Count
Yes
SQL Explain
No
Oauth Credentials
No
Context Comments
Yes
Connection Pooling
No
HLL Sketches
No
Aggregate Awareness
Yes
Incremental PDTs
No
Milliseconds
Yes
Microseconds
Yes
Materialized Views
No
Approximate Count Distinct
No