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URL: https://www.cdata.com/kb/tech/singlestore-cloud-looker.rst

⇱ Analyze SingleStore Data in Looker

Analyze SingleStore Data in Looker

👁 Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Use CData Connect AI to connect to SingleStore Data from Looker and build custom apps using live SingleStore data.

Looker is a business intelligence and big data analytics platform that helps you explore, analyze and share real-time business analytics. When paired with CData Connect AI, you get instant, cloud-to-cloud access to SingleStore data for business applications. This article shows how to connect to SingleStore in Connect AI and then connect to SingleStore data in Looker.

CData Connect AI provides a pure cloud-to-cloud interface for SingleStore, allowing you to build reports from live SingleStore data in Looker — without replicating the data to a natively supported database. As you create applications to work with data, Looker generates SQL queries to gather data. Using optimized data processing out of the box, CData Connect AI pushes all supported SQL operations (filters, JOINs, etc.) directly to SingleStore, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return the requested SingleStore data.

Configure SingleStore Connectivity for Looker

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

  1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
    2. 👁 Adding a Connection
  2. Select "SingleStore" from the Add Connection panel
    3. 👁 Selecting a data source
  3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to SingleStore.

    The following connection properties are required in order to connect to data.

    • Server: The host name or IP of the server hosting the SingleStore database.
    • Port: The port of the server hosting the SingleStore database.
    • Database (Optional): The default database to connect to when connecting to the SingleStore Server. If this is not set, tables from all databases will be returned.

    Connect Using Standard Authentication

    To authenticate using standard authentication, set the following:

    • User: The user which will be used to authenticate with the SingleStore server.
    • Password: The password which will be used to authenticate with the SingleStore server.

    Connect Using Integrated Security

    As an alternative to providing the standard username and password, you can set IntegratedSecurity to True to authenticate trusted users to the server via Windows Authentication.

    Connect Using SSL Authentication

    You can leverage SSL authentication to connect to SingleStore data via a secure session. Configure the following connection properties to connect to data:

    • SSLClientCert: Set this to the name of the certificate store for the client certificate. Used in the case of 2-way SSL, where truststore and keystore are kept on both the client and server machines.
    • SSLClientCertPassword: If a client certificate store is password-protected, set this value to the store's password.
    • SSLClientCertSubject: The subject of the TLS/SSL client certificate. Used to locate the certificate in the store.
    • SSLClientCertType: The certificate type of the client store.
    • SSLServerCert: The certificate to be accepted from the server.

    Connect Using SSH Authentication

    Using SSH, you can securely login to a remote machine. To access SingleStore data via SSH, configure the following connection properties:

    • SSHClientCert: Set this to the name of the certificate store for the client certificate.
    • SSHClientCertPassword: If a client certificate store is password-protected, set this value to the store's password.
    • SSHClientCertSubject: The subject of the TLS/SSL client certificate. Used to locate the certificate in the store.
    • SSHClientCertType: The certificate type of the client store.
    • SSHPassword: The password that you use to authenticate with the SSH server.
    • SSHPort: The port used for SSH operations.
    • SSHServer: The SSH authentication server you are trying to authenticate against.
    • SSHServerFingerPrint: The SSH Server fingerprint used for verification of the host you are connecting to.
    • SSHUser: Set this to the username that you use to authenticate with the SSH server.
    👁 Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown)
  4. Click Save & Test
  5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add SingleStore Connection page and update the User-based permissions. 👁 Updating permissions

Add a Personal Access Token

When connecting to Connect AI through the REST API, the OData API, or the Virtual SQL Server, a Personal Access Token (PAT) is used to authenticate the connection to Connect AI. It is best practice to create a separate PAT for each service to maintain granularity of access.

  1. Click on the Gear icon () at the top right of the Connect AI app to open the settings page.
  2. On the Settings page, go to the Access Tokens section and click Create PAT.
  3. Give the PAT a name and click Create. 👁 Creating a new PAT
  4. The personal access token is only visible at creation, so be sure to copy it and store it securely for future use.

With the connection configured and a PAT generated, you are ready to connect to SingleStore data from Looker.

Connect to SingleStore in Looker

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect AI from Looker to create a new SingleStore data source.

  1. Log-in to Looker
  2. In the navigation pane, select Admin. 👁 Selecting Admin
  3. Under the Database category, select Connections. 👁 Selecting connections
  4. On the Connections page, click Add Connection. 👁 Adding a new connection
  5. Enter the connection settings:
    • Name: the name for the connection in models.
    • Dialect: select Microsoft SQL Server 2017+.
    • SSH Server: leave this disabled.
    • Remote Host:Port: enter tds.cdata.com in the first field and 14333 in the second field.
    • Database: enter the Connection Name of the CData Connect AI data source you want to connect to (for example, QuickBooksOnline1).
    • Username: enter your CData Connect AI username. This is displayed in the top-right corner of the CData Connect AI interface. For example, [email protected]
    • Password: enter the PAT you generated on the Settings page
    Leave the rest of the connection settings at their default values unless you need to modify them. 👁 Configuring connection settings
  6. At the bottom of the page, click Test These Settings to ensure that you can connect to CData Connect AI.
  7. Click Add Connection to create the connection and return to the Connections page. 👁 New connection added.

Your connection is now available for use in Looker. To connect to additional data sources from your CData Connect AI account, repeat the setup steps above, changing the value for Database for each data source.

Creating A Looker Visualization From The SQL Runner and Explore Features

To create a visualization in Looker using the SQL Runner, follow these steps:

  1. In the Looker interface, select Develop -> SQL Runner from the left navigation pane. 👁 Select SQL Runner.
  2. On the SQL Runner interface, select the connection you made in the previous steps. 👁 Entering name for new dashboard.
  3. Now, click the gear symbol next to a table and then select Explore Table. 👁 Entering name for new dashboard.
  4. Next, on the left menu, select fields from the table and click Run. You can now expand the Visualization accordion, and see a bar chart, by default. 👁 Entering name for new dashboard.

    We have now created a visualization of SingleStore data in Looker using CData Connect AI!

Get CData Connect AI

To get live data access to hundreds of SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications, try CData Connect AI today!