Looker is a big data analytics platform and software that helps you to explore, analyze and share real-time business analytics easily. It can easily integrate into business workflows, embeds into third-party systems, and enables companies to build their own data applications.
What is LookML?
LookML is a language used in Looker for describing dimensions, calculations and data relationships in a SQL database.
- A LookML project is a collection of dashboard, model and view files. They are version controlled via a Git repository.
- The View files contain the information about how to calculate information about each table or across multiple tables depending upon the joins.
- The Model files contain information about which table to use and how it should be joined together.
- An Explore is defined within a model file which is a starting point for users to query.
- The Dashboard contains the visualizations.
The above mentioned can be represented as:
Here is a code snippet for model file:
Here is a code snippet for view file:
Advantages of looker:
- API enabled data experience
- Optimized for the cloud
- No desktop software required
- Easy to use
- Many plugin options to Integrates with databases and big data platforms
- Excellent customer and technical support available through chat in seconds
- Easy link-sharing that makes collaborating with teams simple
