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.
If you're interested in using SSL encryption, see this official Greenplum security configuration guide.
Users and security
Change some_password_here to a unique, secure password:
CREATE USER looker WITH ENCRYPTED PASSWORD 'password';
GRANT CONNECT ON DATABASE database_name to looker;
\c database_name
GRANT SELECT ON ALL SEQUENCES IN SCHEMA public TO looker;
GRANT SELECT ON ALL TABLES IN SCHEMA public TO looker;
To grant Looker the necessary permissions to cancel its queries, run the following command:
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION pg_kill_connection(integer) RETURNS boolean AS 'select pg_terminate_backend($1);' LANGUAGE SQL SECURITY DEFINER;
Temp schema setup
Create a schema owned by the Looker user:
CREATE SCHEMA looker_scratch AUTHORIZATION looker;
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.
Select Greenplum from the Dialect drop-down menu.
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.
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.
Greenplum 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 |
Next steps
After completing the database configuration, you can connect to the database from Looker.