Actian Avalanche and Vector

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 that is similar to the examples that are provided on the looker-open-source 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.

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.

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.

Creating the Looker connection to your database

Follow these steps to create the connection from Looker to your database:

  1. In the Admin section of Looker, select Connections, and then click Add Connection.

  2. Select Actian Avalanche or Vector from the Dialect drop-down menu.

  3. 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.

  4. To verify that the connection is successful, click Test. See the Testing database connectivity documentation page for troubleshooting information.

  5. To save these settings, click Connect.

Enabling PDT support

It is possible to use persistent derived tables (PDTs) on your database using the PDT Overrides section 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 the Looker Connection Settings page, in the PDT Overrides section, 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 24.20:

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
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 24.20:

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
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