To connect Looker toAmazon Aurora MySQL, follow the instructions found on the documentation page for connecting toAmazon RDS for MySQL.

In addition to the steps in theAmazon RDS instructions, Amazon Aurora may need further setup, depending on your configuration. If you have a redirected read-only endpoint for Amazon Aurora, or if you want to usepersistent derived tables (PDTs), see the following sections.

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 theEnabling secure database access documentation page.

Alternate failover and load balancing modes

Amazon Aurora MySQL can be configured to usealternate failover and load balancing modes to choose the appropriate JDBC connection behavior you want. Check the linked documentation to see how these alternative parameters change the behavior.

You can set thelookerFailover parameter in theAdditional JDBC parameters field to control these modes.

The options can be used to change the JDBC string as follows:

• lookerFailover=false:jdbc:mysql:hostname...
• lookerFailover=sequential:jdbc:mysql:sequential:hostname...
  • You can do the same withlookerFailover=loadbalance,lookerFailover=replication, andlookerFailover=aurora
• IflookerFailover is not included, the default behavior is:jdbc:mysql:aurora:hostname...
• Ifcluster-ro is in the hostname, the default behavior is:jdbc:mysql:hostname...

Configuring Amazon Aurora MySQL for PDTs

In order to usepersistent derived tables (PDTs) with Aurora, you must use MySQL replication, not Amazon Aurora's default replication, which is read-only. You must set theread_only parameter to0 to make the MySQL replica writable, as described in our documentation onRDS and temporary tables.

If youdon't want to grant write access to the database, you can copy and paste the derived table SQL into thesql_table_name parameter of aview file as shown here. This creates a subquery that is used at query time:

view: my_name {sql_table_name: (sql_of_derived_table_goes_here) ;;}

For more details on Aurora replication, seethe AWS documentation.

Creating the Looker connection to your database

In theAdmin section of Looker, selectConnections, and then clickAdd Connection.

Fill out the connection details. The majority of the settings are common to most database dialects. See theConnecting Looker to your database documentation page for information.

To verify that the connection is successful, clickTest. See theTesting database connectivity documentation page for troubleshooting information.

To save these settings, clickConnect.

Feature support

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

Amazon Aurora MySQL supports the following features as of Looker 26.2: