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.
Create a Looker user
In Firebolt, create a user email and password for Looker to use to connect to your Firebolt instance.
Creating the Looker connection to your database
Follow these steps to create the connection from Looker 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:
- Name: Specify the name of the connection. This is how you will refer to the connection in LookML projects.
- Dialect: Specify the dialect Firebolt.
- Host: Specify the endpoint:
api.app.firebolt.io - Port: Specify the database port. The default is 443.
- Database: Specify the database name.
- Username: Enter the database user email.
- Password: Enter the database user password.
- Additional JDBC parameters: Add any additional Firebolt JDBC parameters
- SSL: Check to use SSL connections.
- Verify SSL: Check to enforce strict SSL certificate verification.
- Max connections per node: This setting can be left at the default value initially. See the Connecting Looker to your database documentation page for more information.
- Connection Pool Timeout: Can be left at the default value initially. Read more about this setting on the Connecting Looker to your database documentation page.
- SQL Runner Precache: To cause SQL Runner not to preload table information and to load table information only when a table is selected, clear this option. Read more about this setting on the Connecting Looker to your database documentation page.
- Database Time Zone: Specify the time zone used in the database. Leave this field blank if you do not want time zone conversion. See the Using time zone settings documentation page for more information.
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.
Feature support
For Looker to support some features, your database dialect must also support them.
Firebolt supports the following features as of Looker 25.10:
| Feature | Supported? |
|---|---|
| Support level | Supported |
| Looker (Google Cloud core) | |
| Symmetric aggregates | |
| Derived tables | |
| Persistent SQL derived tables | |
| Persistent native derived tables | |
| Stable views | |
| Query killing | |
| SQL-based pivots | |
| Timezones | |
| SSL | |
| Subtotals | |
| JDBC additional params | |
| Case sensitive | |
| Location type | |
| List type | |
| Percentile | |
| Distinct percentile | |
| SQL Runner Show Processes | |
| SQL Runner Describe Table | |
| SQL Runner Show Indexes | |
| SQL Runner Select 10 | |
| SQL Runner Count | |
| SQL Explain | |
| OAuth 2.0 credentials | |
| Context comments | |
| Connection pooling | |
| HLL sketches | |
| Aggregate awareness | |
| Incremental PDTs | |
| Milliseconds | |
| Microseconds | |
| Materialized views | |
| Period-over-period measures | |
| Approximate count distinct |