How does Looker use the internal database?

Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jan 22, 2021
 

When we do pretty much anything with Looker - whether that be via the UI or via the API - Looker is reading from and/or writing to the internal database.

For example, say we navigate to the Admin>Users page in the UI. Looker queries the “users” table in the internal db to pull up the list of users on the instance.

Say we create a schedule in the UI. Looker writes to the “scheduled_plan” table in the internal db to record the new schedule. Then the next time we open the Admin>Scheduled Plans page, and the table is queried, the new schedule is there.

Based on these examples, we can see that Looker is constantly reading from and writing to the internal db. One exception is changes to the LookML. Changes to the LookML won’t update the internal db; LookML is stored in directories on the Looker server.

This content is subject to limited support.                

Version history
Last update:
‎07-07-2021 01:12 PM
Updated by: