This page gives a short overview of Looker and describes the benefitsof using it with Cloud SQL. To use Looker with Cloud SQLnow, see theinstructions for connecting Looker to Cloud SQL.

Looker is an enterprise platform for business intelligence, dataapplications, and embedded analytics. Looker helps you explore, share,and visualize your company's data so that you can make better businessdecisions.

How Looker works

Looker lets data experts at each organization describe their data usinga lightweight modeling language called LookML. LookML tells Looker howto query data, so everyone in the organization can create easy-to-read reportsand dashboards to explore patterns of data. Looker offers additionalfeatures for creating custom data applications and experiences.

Looker's platform works with transactional databases and analyticaldatastores. Looker lets you create consistent data models on top ofall your data with speed and accuracy. It also offers a unified surface toaccess all of an organization's data.

Restrictions

Cloud SQL doesn't support the followingLooker features:

• Persistent Native Derived Tables
• Stable views
• Case sensitive
• Oauth credentials
• Connection pooling
• HLL sketches
• Incremental PDTS
• Materialized views
• Approximate count distinct

Google Cloud SQL doesn't supportCREATE TABLE AS SELECT statements, soyou must use thecreate_process LookML parameter to define Persistent Native DerivedTables (PDTs).

Looker integration with Cloud SQL

Looker supports hosting in Google Cloud. BecauseLooker is platform independent, it connects to data in Cloud SQLand other public clouds.

If you already have a Looker instance running, see theinstructions for connecting Looker to Cloud SQL.

What's next

There are many options related to administering Looker, customizing itsdata model, and exposing data to users. For more information, see the followingresources:

• Looker Documentation
• Looker Help Center
• Looker Training