Create Reports from Lakebase Data in Looker Studio

Looker Studio, formerly known as Google Data Studio, empowers users to craft customized reports featuring data visualizations that can be shared with clients while reflecting your brand identity. When combined with CData Connect AI, you gain immediate cloud-to-cloud access to Lakebase data to create visualizations, dashboards, and more. This article provides step-by-step instructions on establishing a virtual database for Lakebase and generating reports from Lakebase data within Looker Studio.

CData Connect AI offers a seamless cloud-to-cloud interface tailored for Lakebase, making it straightforward to construct reports directly from live Lakebase data within Looker Studio without the need for data replication. As you create visualizations, Looker Studio generates queries to retrieve data. With its inherent optimized data processing capabilities, CData Connect AI efficiently channels all supported query operations, including filters, JOINs, and more, directly to Lakebase. This leverages server-side processing to swiftly provide the requested Lakebase data.

Configure Lakebase Connectivity for Looker Studio

Connectivity to Lakebase from Looker Studio is made possible through CData Connect AI. To work with Lakebase data from Looker Studio, we start by creating and configuring a Lakebase connection.

1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
👁 Adding a Connection

2. Select "Lakebase" from the Add Connection panel
👁 Selecting a data source

3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Lakebase. To connect to Databricks Lakebase, start by setting the following properties:
   • DatabricksInstance: The Databricks instance or server hostname, provided in the format instance-abcdef12-3456-7890-abcd-abcdef123456.database.cloud.databricks.com.
   • Server: The host name or IP address of the server hosting the Lakebase database.
   • Port (optional): The port of the server hosting the Lakebase database, set to 5432 by default.
   • Database (optional): The database to connect to after authenticating to the Lakebase Server, set to the authenticating user's default database by default.

   OAuth Client Authentication

   To authenicate using OAuth client credentials, you need to configure an OAuth client in your service principal. In short, you need to do the following:

   1. Create and configure a new service principal
   2. Assign permissions to the service principal
   3. Create an OAuth secret for the service principal

   For more information, refer to the Setting Up OAuthClient Authentication section in the Help documentation.

   OAuth PKCE Authentication

   To authenticate using the OAuth code type with PKCE (Proof Key for Code Exchange), set the following properties:

   • AuthScheme: OAuthPKCE.
   • User: The authenticating user's user ID.

   For more information, refer to the Help documentation.

   👁 Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown)
   
4. Click Save & Test
5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Lakebase Connection page and update the User-based permissions. 👁 Updating permissions
   

With the connection configured, you are ready to connect to Lakebase data from Looker Studio.

Visualize Live Lakebase Data from Looker Studio

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect AI from Looker Studio to create a new Lakebase data source and build a simple visualization from the data.

1. Log into Looker Studio, click data sources, create a new data source, and choose CData Connect AI Connector.
👁 Create a new connection in Looker Studio

2. Click Authorize and allow access to your Google account. 👁 Granting permissions to the Connector
   
3. Click Authorize to authenticate with your CData Connect AI instance 👁 Authenticating with CData Connect AI
   
4. In the CData Connect AI Connector in Looker Studio select Connections to import from the dropdown and click Next
👁 Importing from Connections

5. Now select a Connection (e.g. Lakebase1) and click Next 👁 Selecting a Connection
   
6. Select a Table (e.g. Orders) or use a Custom Query and click Connect to continue 👁 Selecting a Table
   
7. If needed, modify columns, click Create Report, and add the data source to the report.
👁 Configuring column definitions

8. Select a visualization style and add it to the report.
9. Select Dimensions and Measures to customize your visualization.
👁 Visualizing Lakebase data in Looker Studio

Live Access to Lakebase Data from Cloud Applications

Now you have a direct, cloud-to-cloud connection to live Lakebase data from your Looker Studio workbook. You can create more data sources and new visualizations, build reports, and more — all without replicating Lakebase data.

Try CData Connect AI and get real-time data access to hundreds of SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications.