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.
Users and security
To perform actions on your database, Looker needs to have a user account on your database.
To configure a database user for Looker to use, perform the following steps on your database:
Create a database user.
CREATE USER USERNAME; SET PASSWORD FOR USERNAME = PASSWORD ('PASSWORD');
Grant
SELECT
privileges to the database user on the database that you want Looker to query. Replacedatabase_name
with the name of your database.GRANT SELECT ON DATABASE_NAME.* TO USERNAME;
Once you create the database user, you can enter the database user account credentials in the Username and Password fields of the Looker UI when you create the Looker connection to your database.
Creating the Looker connection to your database
To create the connection from Looker to your database, follow these steps:
- In the Admin section of Looker, select Connections, and then click Add Connection.
- From the Dialect drop-down menu, select Google Cloud SQL.
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:
- Host: The database hostname that is used to connect to the Google Cloud SQL for MySQL database. For an SSH tunnel, use
localhost
. - Port: The port used that is to connect to the Google Cloud SQL for MySQL database.
- Database: The name of the Google Cloud SQL for MySQL database instance.
Username: The username of the account that Looker will use to sign in to Google Cloud SQL for MySQL.
Password: The password of the account that Looker will use to sign in to Google Cloud SQL for MySQL.
Additional JDBC parameters: Additional JDBC parameters (optional).
SSL: If checked, enables an SSL connection; however, SSL connections to Google Cloud SQL for MySQL are not supported by default.
Verify SSL: If checked, SSL verification is enforced. However, SSL connections to Google Cloud are not supported by default.
- Host: The database hostname that is used to connect to the Google Cloud SQL for MySQL database. For an SSH tunnel, use
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.
PDT support
Google Cloud SQL for MySQL does not support CREATE TABLE AS SELECT
statements, so you must use the create_process
LookML parameter to define PDTs.
Feature support
For Looker to support some features, your database dialect must also support them.
Google Cloud SQL supports the following features as of Looker 24.18:
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 | No |
Stable Views | No |
Query Killing | Yes |
SQL-based Pivots | Yes |
Timezones | Yes |
SSL | Yes |
Subtotals | Yes |
JDBC Additional Params | Yes |
Case Sensitive | No |
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 | No |
HLL Sketches | No |
Aggregate Awareness | No |
Incremental PDTs | No |
Milliseconds | Yes |
Microseconds | Yes |
Materialized Views | No |
Approximate Count Distinct | No |
Next steps
After you have created your database connection, set authentication options.