What is Looker
Looker is business intelligence software and a big data analytics platform that helps you explore, analyse, and share real-time business intelligence. It is a handy tool and one of the few BI class products that allow you to work online with pre configured data cubes.
Advantages
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The Modern Web Architecture
Looker usually lives in the cloud (Looker-hosted, or your own VPC), it uses git, and it runs entirely in-browser, so there’s no desktop install.
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Lack of Own Analytical Mechanism
Looker operates entirely on the data in your database. It generates SQL based on the semantic layer you design – sends that off to the DB and then displays the results in tables or graphs.
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Analogue of the SQL for Data Modelling (LookML)
LookML brings to data modelling many of the tools used in software development, such as collaborative development with Git integration, object definitions, and inheritance. It allows you to define a dimension or measure once on it, and build on it, instead of having to repeat this effort.
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Ensuring Integrity
Access to data modelling remains in the same hands – there is only one master version of the data model.
Analytics Data Stack Structure
Looker Alternatives
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Metabase
Metabase is an open-source business intelligence tool that lets you create charts and dashboards using data from a variety of databases and data sources.
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Mprove
Mprove is a self-service business intelligence app that can build a comprehensive self-service BI for your company, which works with PostgreSQL, Clickhouse, and BigQuery.
How We Use Looker
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Aircall
Setting Up Data Engineering Processes and Looker Tables for Improved Data Pipelines and Telephony Insights
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