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Question

What is the limit for suggest_dimension element in Looker filter?

  • 2 February 2017
  • 4 replies
  • 360 views
K
Userlevel 2

I have more than 5000 elements to display under filter field (from suggest_dimension), Looker is only displaying few of them, so is there any limitation on how many elements filter will display in Looker explore?


Also I can only search element under filter by writing exact word it start with, not with contain option. So let’s say I have week elements (like 2016-WK12), in order to search for this element, have to start writing 2016-W… and it appears but it will not display if I just write WK. Any option that it will serach by contain?


One more question, is it possible to control one filter using selection in other filter in same explore filter panel (under same look)? I know that we can do this at dashboard level.

4 replies

sam
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Userlevel 5
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Hi @kshah7 - a lot of this is explained well in this discourse.


To summarize, Looker will run the following query:


SELECT DISTINCT <field> FROM <table> WHERE <field> ilike 'value%'  LIMIT 500

So as you can see, we only do a wildcard match after the entered text, and we limit the results to 500 so as to keep the instance from slowing down too much. I can let the product team know you’re interested in changing those defaults.


As for the filters influencing other filters - we call that “faceted filtering”, and it is only possible at the dashboard level. I’ll let the product team know you’d like to see this at the explore/Look level!

lloydtabb
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Userlevel 6
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What you are likely seeing is slowness in your database. When we can fit 5000 entries in memory, We do in memory suggest (we’ve copied it down into the Looker’s server), when it is over 5000, (or maybe 6K) we do a query each keystroke. This can be slow on some databases. We probably should give you some way to raise the limit here. At some point though, we have to hit the database.



We’ve been flipping around on this one. I know it has been implemented both ways. The UI on this is hard to get right. Contains isn’t what you want in lots of cases and it is in other cases. Maybe we need a flag here that lets you choose.



Not in a Look, only at the dashboard level. Suggests can pound the database. We’d need more control over when this happened. Again, maybe a switch on the suggest.

R

FYI my limit is only 100 for suggestions not 500 – is there a way to change this limit?

haleyb
Userlevel 2

I’m also experiencing the 100 row limit on filter suggestions. I chatted with a Looker rep and he said there’s no way to customize that number, and I don’t believe there are plans to change that.

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