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Previously internal product knowledge now available for you to explore!

  • 1,741 Topics
  • 303 Replies

1741 Topics

V
Looker Staff
vishal.dharmadhikariLooker Staff
asked in Technical Tips & Tricks

What does the graph_derived_tables_for_model endpoint do?

You can use the graph_derived_tables_for_model endpoint (documentation) to get a dependency graph of all the PDTs in a specific model in the DOT language. The output can then be rendered into an image by passing the output into a graphviz tool. The rendered image will look something like:  This content is subject to limited support.                

0
V
Looker Staff
1 year ago
sam
Looker Staff
samLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Error "Could not find a view named x" when extending a viewKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Jul 8, 2017 When extending a view, remember to include the view you're extending.include: "base.view"view: new {extends: [base]}  Make sure that the string inside include is the filename (what you see on the list on the left hand side), and that the string inside extends is the actual view name. (The string defined at: view: view_name inside the view file).Extending a view (docs) This content is subject to limited support.                  

130
sam
Looker Staff
1 year ago
sam
Looker Staff
samLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How are dev branch names generated in Looker?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Apr 27, 2021 It is a random hash per developer, per instance.As of 5.0, you can create and name shared branches as you like, as mentioned in docs This content is subject to limited support.                  

130
sam
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Peggy_Beard
Looker Staff
Peggy_BeardLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why does my project still have the "Deploy to Production" option when I have enabled pull requestsKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Dec 16, 2020Has the project been deployed to production at least once? The very first deploy can't be via pull request. This content is subject to limited support.                  

130
Peggy_Beard
Looker Staff
1 year ago
noahmac
Looker Staff
noahmacLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Network Requirements for Instances Connecting to MarketplaceKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Apr 22, 2020 These are our network requirements for instances connecting to our Marketplace backend:• HTTPS port 443 should be open or able to access https://marketplace-api.looker.com• SSH port 22 should be open or able to access https://github.com• GIT port 9418 should be open or able to access https://github.comYou should be able to access the content you're interested in after adjusting these rules. This content is subject to limited support.                 

130
noahmac
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Lan
Community Admin
LanCommunity Admin
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

publish as db view in multiple projects / modelsKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Feb 11, 2021 What happens if you publish db view in multiple projects or models?It will create a db view for each model -- given that all model belongs to the same projectsIf a PDT is included in two models in two projects, it will only create one stable view for one project This content is subject to limited support.                   

130
Lan
Community Admin
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Troubleshooting Enabling FoldersKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Nov 27, 2019 If you want to enable folders for your Projects and have a large number of varying lookml files, take the following precautions before you get started.Have all developers check in all changes before anyone enables folders. Identify any files that are using NDTs and flag them as files that need the include statement to be updated. Identify any model files that have include statements. These will need to be translate to the new include syntax post-migration. Check to make sure that connections that do not have PDTs enabled do not have include: /../*.view as this can cause lookml errors. After checking the enable folders box in your project, make sure that no one else is make commits/pushes anywhere else in the project until you have deployed the new folder structure changes. This can blocks commits that prevents you from resolving merge conflicts. If you encounter the issue from #4, revert all uncommitted changes, pull, and push immediately. Fix any issues afte

130
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
1 year ago
Peggy_Beard
Looker Staff
Peggy_BeardLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Are Amazon S3 bucket credentials encrypted when Looker stores them?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Feb 4, 2021Yes! S3 creds are encrypted in the scheduled_plan_destination table. This content is subject to limited support.                  

130
Peggy_Beard
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Can Admin users view the rendering queue?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Aug 22, 2017 No, users cannot see the rendering queue.The rendering of PDFs and PNGs is handled by a separate process called Chromium which happens outside of the Looker UI.There is a Feature Request for being able to see rendering queue in the Admin panel. This content is subject to limited support.                   

130
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
1 year ago
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
molly.lippsettLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

For self-hosted on GCP, can the internal database by CloudSQL?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Apr 10, 2020Yes, GCP CloudSQL's MySQL database can be used as Looker's internal database This content is subject to limited support.                  

130
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Kento_Tomine
Moderator
Kento_TomineModerator
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Can we disable curated search by default?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Feb 11, 2021 Yes! You can disable it from Admin > General > disable curated searchhttps://docs.looker.com/admin-options/settings/general#curated_search This content is subject to limited support.                  

130
Kento_Tomine
Moderator
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Table calculation for time difference accounting for negativesKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Jun 1, 2020 The general logic here is, if the time diff is negative, then build own results using diff_minutes/diff_seconds, otherwise; do the calculation.if(${history.created_time}<${history.completed_time},concat("-",ceiling(diff_minutes(${history.created_time},${history.completed_time})/60), ":", abs(mod(diff_seconds(${history.created_time},${history.completed_time}),60))),to_string(${history.completed_time})) This content is subject to limited support.                  

130
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why do I need to specify the type of my dimension?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Aug 16, 2018 Chat tip: Inputting type parameter of dimension isn't required but will default to String if nothing is specified.Specifying a parameter for your dimension isn't required but if not specified will default to String. However, specifying parameters could provide additional functionality.Example: Number Parameter FunctionalityTable Calculations Custom Measure Filter optionsFor more information about dimension types check out our docs.  This content is subject to limited support.                  

120
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
1 year ago
sam
Looker Staff
samLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

When would my Remote Origin URL start with `ssh://`?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: March 2021  When you're using a non-standard Git port. From git docs:URLs with custom or non-standard git ports can be used with Looker by adding the non-standard port number to the git URL. For example: ssh://git@corporate.git.server.com:22/myorganization/myproject.gitPlease note that you must include the ssh:// for this to work properly. This content is subject to limited support.                

120
sam
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why do I see a ridiculously high count of login events while looking at the System Activity event explore?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Aug 23, 2018When a user logs in using OpenID auth (i.e. Okta, OneLogin, etc.), Looker will authenticate said user once a minute to keep that user logged in. Each authentication event will counted as a login in system activity, which is why a given user might appear to have logged in hundreds of times on a single day. This content is subject to limited support.                  

120
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
1 year ago
quinn.morrison
Looker Staff
quinn.morrisonLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Do SSO embed PDF/PNG requests count towards the concurrent-render task limit?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jan 30, 2018 Yes, it is an instance wide flag, it doesn't care who the user is. This content is subject to limited support.                  

120
quinn.morrison
Looker Staff
1 year ago
quinn.morrison
Looker Staff
quinn.morrisonLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Is there a way to tell the difference between a devmode PDT and a production PDT from looking at `looker_scratch`?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Dec 18, 2017 There isn't, but dev mode PDTs will not appear in the Admin > PDTs panel. So you could cross reference that list with the tables in the scratch schema This content is subject to limited support.                  

120
quinn.morrison
Looker Staff
1 year ago
david.chiaramonte
Looker Staff
david.chiaramonteLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Does Looker validate imported LookML from project import?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Apr 27, 2020 Nope!This is outlined in our docs here. Specifically:This is a good option when the same team owns both projects and can validate changes in both places before pushing to production.This means that errors will only surface in their respective projects, so devs will want access to both the base_project as well as the destination_project to validate LookML changes in both places before pushing to production. This content is subject to limited support.                  

120
david.chiaramonte
Looker Staff
1 year ago
emma.wang
Looker Staff
emma.wangLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Can I rename looker_tmp for MySQLKnowledge Drop

Last tested: May 15, 2019 No.looker_tmp is used for creating temp tables for System Activity, and it's hardcoded into the codebase and it can't actually be named differently.Relevant docs: https://docs.looker.com/setup-and-management/on-prem-mgmt/migrating-to-mysql#create_a_database_and_user This content is subject to limited support.                  

120
emma.wang
Looker Staff
1 year ago
A
Looker Staff
adina.katzLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Does a change to a parent PDT cause child PDTs to rebuild?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Sep 30, 2019 Yes. When there is a change to the parent PDT, the child PDTs hash changes and will rebuild with the reason "initial creation". This content is subject to limited support.                   

120
A
Looker Staff
1 year ago
xin
Looker Staff
xinLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

System activity history explore: More Granular History Created DimensionKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Aug 18, 2020 These can be useful when you have to check history counts in a smaller interval during performance investigation. For this we can create a table calculations that look like the following:Every 10 minutesif(extract_minutes(${history.created_time})<11, "0-10",if(extract_minutes(${history.created_time})<21, "10-20",if(extract_minutes(${history.created_time})<31, "20-30",if(extract_minutes(${history.created_time})<41, "30-40",if(extract_minutes(${history.created_time})<51, "40-50","50-00"))))) Every 5 minutesif(extract_minutes(${history.created_time})<6, 5,if(extract_minutes(${history.created_time})<11, 10,if(extract_minutes(${history.created_time})<16, 15,if(extract_minutes(${history.created_time})<21, 20,if(extract_minutes(${history.created_time})<26, 25, if(extract_minutes(${history.created_time})<31, 30, if(extract_minutes(${history.created_time})<36, 35, if(extract_minutes(${history.created_time})<41, 40, if(extract_minu

120
xin
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Beginner's guide to distributed systems (Clustered/loadbalancing)Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Mar 27, 2019 Imagine that you have been tasked with carrying water from a well to the town. You have to meet the demands of the town with how much water to bring. We'll use this as an analogy to define our terms:High Concurrency: This is purely the amount of volume of water you can carry. You can either increase your concurrency by getting a bigger bucket of water (more powerful server: "vertical scaling") or getting multiple buckets of water (clustered servers: "horizontal scaling"). Both achieve the same end goal, but unfortunately you can't get an infinitely big bucket of water, the largest they sell is 10 gallon buckets. If you want to carry more water, you'll need to get more buckets at this point.High Availability: If you drop a bucket on the way, then there's a crack and all the water spills out. It doesn't matter how big your bucket is, if it has a hole, that water starts to leak. If you want to make sure you don't lose water, you need multiple buckets (a cluster),

120
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
1 year ago
srinija.godavarthi
Looker Staff
srinija.godavarthiLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Can you change the timezone of the time that is appended to files that are being scheduled?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Mar 18, 2020 Tldr: no.The timezone that determines the timestamp that is appended to end of file names, is the system time zone. For Looker hosted instances, that will always be UTC, (just like how it is for logs and system activity)All of the looker servers have UTC as the system time but some self-hosted servers are random timezones: https://docs.looker.com/admin-options/tutorials/timezones#system_time_zoneSelf-hosted instances could have different timezones. This content is subject to limited support.                  

120
srinija.godavarthi
Looker Staff
1 year ago
sam
Looker Staff
samLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

In what order does the PDT regenerator check trigger values?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: April 2021 The regenerator checks PDT triggers in a completely arbitrary order. The only rule is that if there are table dependencies, then the regenerator will check in order of those dependencies.What's a dependency?If Table A references Table B in its SQL, then we call that a dependency. For example:view: table_A { derived_table { sql: SELECT * FROM ${table_B.SQL_TABLE_NAME} ;; …This content is subject to limited support.                   

120
sam
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Vincent
Looker Staff
VincentLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How many threads does the regenerator process have by default? Rather how many PDTs can it build at one time?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Apr 23, 2021 This is controlled by the Max PDT Builder Connections setting in your database connection.Docs This content is subject to limited support.                   

120
Vincent
Looker Staff
1 year ago

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