Dremio

Connect your Looker instance to a Dremio database to analyze your data. This document describes how to set connection parameters in Looker and configure options to encrypt network traffic. Looker tests dialect compatibility against Dremio version 1.4.9 Enterprise Edition, Dremio 11+, and Dremio 26+ (Enterprise & Cloud).

Encrypting network traffic

It is a best practice to encrypt network traffic between the Looker application and your database. Consider one of the options that are described on the Enabling secure database access documentation page.

Creating the Looker connection to your database

Follow these steps to create the connection from Looker to your database:

  1. In the Admin section of Looker, select Connections, and then click Add Connection.

  2. 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. Use the default values in all the other fields, or leave them blank.

    • Name: Assign a unique name to the connection. The name is how LookML refers to this connection.

    • Dialect: Select Dremio 26.0+ (Arrow Flight SQL), Dremio 11+, or Dremio.

    • Host: Enter the IP address or hostname of the server where Dremio is running. For Dremio Cloud, enter the Flight endpoint (for example, data.dremio.cloud or data.eu.dremio.cloud).

    • Port:

      • For Dremio 26.0+ (Arrow Flight SQL): The default port is 32010 (or 443 for Dremio Cloud).
      • For Dremio 11+ and Dremio: The default port is 31010.

    • Database: The default value is DREMIO (or your target catalog name).

    • Schema: (Optional, Dremio 26.0+ (Arrow Flight SQL) only) Enter the default space or schema to use for queries (for example, my_space or my_catalog.my_schema).

    • Username: Enter the username that Looker uses to access Dremio.

    • Password: Enter the password (or personal access token) that's associated with the username.

    • Enable SSL: Toggle on to enable encrypted communication over Arrow Flight / TLS.

    • Verify SSL Certificate: If you're using self-signed or internal certificates without standard Certificate Authority (CA) verification, toggle this off to disable certificate verification.

    • Additional JDBC parameters: Add any additional JDBC parameters. See the Supported JDBC parameters section on this page for the list of parameters that Looker supports.

  3. To verify that the connection is successful, click the Test Connection button in the Status details section at the bottom of the Connections Settings page.

  4. If Looker displays Can Connect, press Connect to create the connection.

Your database connection is then added to the list on the Looker Connections Admin page.

Debugging

Connect your web browser to dremio_host:9047 on the server. From the SQL Editor, run SELECT 1 FROM (VALUES(1)) to verify that Dremio is installed correctly and that queries are able to execute.

Supported JDBC parameters

For Dremio, Looker supports the following JDBC parameters in the Additional JDBC parameters field for the connection. See the documentation for your database for information on these parameters.

Dremio 26.0+ (Arrow Flight SQL) parameters

  • useEncryption
  • disableCertificateVerification
  • schema
  • catalog
  • token
  • useKerberos
  • threadPoolSize

Dremio & Dremio 11+ parameters

  • disableCertificateVerification
  • impersonation_target
  • password
  • projectId
  • routing_queue
  • routing_tag
  • socksProxyHost: For public Looker instances, the value for the socksProxyHost parameter must be the public IP address of the instance.
  • socksProxyPassword
  • socksProxyPort
  • socksProxyUsername
  • ssl
  • token_type
  • user

Feature support

For Looker to support some features, your database dialect must also support them.

Dremio 26.0+ (Arrow Flight SQL) feature support

Dremio 26+ with Arrow Flight SQL supports the following features as of Looker 26.18:

Feature Supported?
Looker (Google Cloud core)
Symmetric aggregates
Derived tables
Persistent SQL derived tables
Persistent native derived tables
Stable views
Query killing
SQL-based pivots
Time zones
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
In-database analytic models
Custom calendars

Dremio 11+ feature support

Dremio 11+ supports the following features as of Looker 26.18:

Feature Supported?
Looker (Google Cloud core)
Symmetric aggregates
Derived tables
Persistent SQL derived tables
Persistent native derived tables
Stable views
Query killing
SQL-based pivots
Time zones
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
In-database analytic models
Custom calendars

Dremio feature support

Dremio supports the following features as of Looker 26.18:

Feature Supported?
Looker (Google Cloud core)
Symmetric aggregates
Derived tables
Persistent SQL derived tables
Persistent native derived tables
Stable views
Query killing
SQL-based pivots
Time zones
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
In-database analytic models
Custom calendars

Native Arrow Flight SQL compared to the legacy custom driver

Looker includes native out-of-the-box support for Dremio 26.0+ (Arrow Flight SQL) using the bundled Apache Arrow Flight SQL JDBC driver. Installing unpackaged custom JDBC driver JAR files is no longer required for Dremio 26+ instances.

For older Dremio deployments on customer-hosted instances that use legacy Dremio versions without native Arrow Flight support, refer to the Unpackaged JDBC drivers documentation page.

Next steps

After you have completed the database connection, configure authentication options.