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.
To learn more about using SSL encryption, see the Microsoft documentation.
Users and security
Looker authenticates to your database using SQL Database Authentication. Using a domain account is not supported.
To create an account, run the following commands, changing some_password_here to a unique, secure password:
CREATE LOGIN looker
WITH PASSWORD = 'some_password_here';
USE MyDatabase;
CREATE USER looker FOR LOGIN looker;
GO
Looker must be authorized to detect and stop currently running queries, which requires the following permissions:
KILL DATABASE CONNECTION
VIEW DATABASE STATE
To grant these permissions, run the following command:
GRANT KILL DATABASE CONNECTION TO looker;
GRANT VIEW DATABASE STATE to looker;
Temp schema setup
Create a schema owned by the Looker user:
CREATE SCHEMA looker_scratch AUTHORIZATION looker;
Creating the Looker connection 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. The following fields have additional information that applies to Microsoft Azure SQL Database:
- Dialect: Select Microsoft Azure SQL Database.
Remote Host and Port: Enter the hostname and port (the default port is 1433).
If you need to specify a non-default port other than 1433 and your database requires the use of a comma instead of a colon, you can add
useCommaHostPortSeparator=truein the Additional JDBC parameters field further down in the connection settings, which will allow you to use a comma in the Remote Host:Port field. For example:jdbc:sqlserver://hostname,1434
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.
Microsoft Azure SQL Database supports the following features as of Looker 26.0:
| 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 | |
| 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 |