Looker dialects

Looker supports a wide range of SQL database dialects and continues to improve the feature implementations for existing dialect options as well as add new dialects. Because our modeling layer, LookML, builds on top of the in-database features available, some dialects allow for a more powerful implementation than others.

Support levels and JDBC installation

Looker has two support levels for dialects based on a dialect's built-in feature set and the level of demand by Looker users:

  • Supported: A dialect that is fully supported by Looker. Looker is committed to improving this dialect implementation and will fix issues based on severity and demand. Looker runs exhaustive tests against this dialect at least weekly to ensure quality.

  • Integration: A dialect that is partially supported. Looker is able to connect to this dialect, but there are no commitments to improve implementation, fix issues, or regularly run tests against the dialect.

For the dialects whose value of JDBC Driver Included? is No, the needed JDBC JAR file is not bundled with the Looker JAR files. For customer-hosted installations of Looker, you must configure the driver for use with Looker as described on the Unpackaged JDBC drivers documentation page.

Looker (original) supports the following SQL dialects as of Looker 25.10:

Dialect Support Level JDBC Driver Included?
Actian Avalanche Supported
Amazon Athena Supported
Amazon Aurora MySQL Supported
Amazon Redshift Supported
Amazon Redshift 2.1+ Supported
Amazon Redshift Serverless 2.1+ Supported
Apache Druid Supported
Apache Druid 0.13+ Supported
Apache Druid 0.18+ Supported
Apache Hive 2.3+ Integration
Apache Hive 3.1.2+ Supported
Apache Spark 3+ Supported
ClickHouse Supported
Cloudera Impala 3.1+ Supported
Cloudera Impala 3.1+ with Native Driver Supported
Cloudera Impala with Native Driver Supported
DataVirtuality Supported
Databricks Supported
Denodo 7 Supported
Denodo 8 Supported
Dremio Supported
Dremio 11+ Supported
Exasol Supported
Firebolt Supported
Google BigQuery Legacy SQL Supported
Google BigQuery Standard SQL Supported
Google Cloud PostgreSQL Supported
Google Cloud SQL Supported
Google Spanner Supported
Greenplum Supported
HyperSQL Integration
IBM Netezza Supported
MariaDB Supported
Microsoft Azure PostgreSQL Supported
Microsoft Azure SQL Database Supported
Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics Supported
Microsoft SQL Server 2008+ Integration
Microsoft SQL Server 2012+ Integration
Microsoft SQL Server 2016 Supported
Microsoft SQL Server 2017+ Supported
MongoBI Supported
MySQL Supported
MySQL 8.0.12+ Supported
Oracle Supported
Oracle ADWC Integration
PostgreSQL 9.5+ Supported
PostgreSQL pre-9.5 Integration
PrestoDB Supported
PrestoSQL Supported
SAP HANA Supported
SAP HANA 2+ Supported
SingleStore Supported
SingleStore 7+ Supported
Snowflake Supported
Teradata Supported
Trino Supported
Vector Supported
Vertica Supported

Database configuration instructions

Instructions are available for these SQL dialects:

Looker does not support new connections for the following dialects. Existing connections will continue to function as expected. For Looker instances with existing connections to these dialects, the following links to documentation are provided for reference:

Looker also connects with the following dialects. Reach out to your Looker contact for assistance.

  • IBM Netezza

Next steps

After you configure your database to work with Looker, you're ready to connect Looker to your database.