Getting the connection credentials
Log in to the Google Cloud console.
Select the appropriate project.
From the menu, select IAM & Admin and then Service accounts.
Select Create service account and fill in the dialog box as follows:
- Service account name: Enter
looker-spanner-service
or something similar. - Role: Select Cloud Spanner and then Cloud Spanner Database Reader.
- Furnish a new private key: Select the Furnish a new private key checkbox, and select JSON under Key type.
- Service account name: Enter
Click Create and keep track of the following:
- The email address associated with the service account
- The name and location of the JSON credential file that was downloaded
Creating the Looker connection
- In the Admin section of Looker, select Connections, and then click Add Connection.
Fill out the connection details (see the Connecting Looker to your database documentation page for more information):
- Dialect: Google Cloud Spanner.
- Name: The name of the connection.
- Project Name: The project ID for the Google project that contains the Spanner database.
- Instance Name: The name of the instance that contains the Spanner database.
- Database: The name of the Spanner database.
- Schema: Leave this blank.
- Max Connections: The maximum number of total connections to the Spanner database across all users. The default is 30.
- Connection Pool Timeout: The number of seconds a query will wait before timing out because of a full connection pool.
- Additional Params: Any additional JDBC driver parameters.
Click Test These Settings to verify a connection.
Click Add Connection.
Feature support
For Looker to support some features, your database dialect must also support them.
Google Cloud Spanner supports the following features as of Looker 23.4:
Feature | Supported? |
---|---|
Support Level | Supported |
Symmetric Aggregates | Yes |
Derived Tables | Yes |
Persistent SQL Derived Tables | No |
Persistent Native Derived Tables | No |
Stable Views | No |
Query Killing | Yes |
Pivots | No |
Timezones | Yes |
SSL | Yes |
Subtotals | No |
JDBC Additional Params | Yes |
Case Sensitive | Yes |
Location Type | Yes |
List Type | No |
Percentile | No |
Distinct Percentile | No |
SQL Runner Show Processes | No |
SQL Runner Describe Table | No |
SQL Runner Show Indexes | No |
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 | No |
Incremental PDTs | No |
Milliseconds | No |
Microseconds | No |
Materialized Views | No |
Approximate Count Distinct | No |
References
Next steps
After you have connected your database to Looker, configure sign-in options for your users.