Looker Connector: Overview¶
Alation Cloud Service Applies to Alation Cloud Service instances of Alation
Customer Managed Applies to customer-managed instances of Alation
Applies from release 2020.4
To download the Looker OCF connector package, go to the Alation Connector Hub available from the Customer Portal. Go to Customer Portal > Connectors > Alation Connector Hub. Only Alation users with access to the Customer Portal can access the Alation Connector Hub. If you don’t have access to the Customer Portal, contact Alation Support.
This connector should be used to catalog Looker as a BI source in Alation. The connector catalogs Looker objects such as folders, dashboards, and reports. It enables end users to search and find Looker objects from the Alation user interface.
Team¶
The following administrators are required to install this connector:
Alation Server Admin/Linux Administrator:
Installs the connector
Creates a Looker BI source
Provisions Alation API tokens
Looker Administrator:
Provisions Looker API tokens
Provides access to Looker Objects
Scope¶
The table below shows what features are covered by this connector:
Feature |
Scope |
Availability |
---|---|---|
Looker Instance |
Catalog Looker instance as a BI Source. |
Yes |
Folders |
Catalog Folders and Sub-Folders in Looker |
Yes |
Filter Folders |
Ability to include or exclude certain Folders |
Yes |
Reports |
Catalog reports in a Folder |
Yes |
Report Objects |
Catalog report objects such as charts and tables |
Yes |
Report object dimensions, measures, expressions |
Catalog dimensions, measures, and measure expressions of a report objects |
Yes |
Report object data sources |
Catalog data sources used by report objects |
Yes |
Report object lineage |
Catalog the lineage of a report object. |
Yes* ** |
Filter Reports |
Ability to include or exclude certain reports |
No |
Report Owner |
Owners or Authors who created a report |
No |
Dashboards |
Catalog dashboards in a Folder |
Yes |
Dashboard object Measures & Dimensions |
Catalog dimensions and measure of a dashboard object |
Yes |
Data Sources |
Catalog data sources |
Yes |
Image Preview |
Ability to show a thumbnail image of reports and dashboards |
Yes |
Popularity |
Popularity of Dashboards & Reports |
No |
Security Replication |
Replicate access control to reports and dashboards |
No |
* Report object lineage is available only if the underlying data source is cataloged in Alation and fully qualified SQL and table information is available from the Looker APIs.
** The dialects selected in the Looker while creating a connection should be a part of the supported datasources mentioned below:
MySQL, SQL server, Snowflake, Oracle, PostgreSQL, Amazon Redshift, Databricks and Google BigQuery.
Looker Object Hierarchy¶
The following image shows the hierarchy of Looker objects and how they are cataloged in Alation:
Looker APIs¶
The following table lists the Looker APIs used by this connector to extract metadata from Looker. Looker API version 4.0 is supported.
Type |
API Endpoint |
Description |
---|---|---|
Authentication |
|
Method is to fetch the access token |
Folders |
|
Gets folders from Looker |
Child folders |
|
Gets child folders for a given folder |
Data sources |
|
Gets data source from a folder |
Dashboards |
|
Gets dashboards from Looker |
Dashboard |
|
Gets a dashboard by ID |
Reports |
|
Gets looks from Looker |
LookML models |
|
Gets LookML models from Looker. Models are extracted to map reports and data sources |
Dimension and Measures |
|
Gets BI dimensions and measures from Looker |
Merge queries |
|
Gets a query with the given result id from looker |
Query |
|
Gets the query from query ID |
Query SQL |
|
Gets a raw query from Looker |