Originally reported by aithority.com. This article summarizes the Looker feature release announced in August 2020.
Overview
Looker, the business intelligence (BI) and analytics platform that became part of Google Cloud, delivered a major feature release addressing three areas critical to enterprise data teams: modern BI capabilities, foundational performance and infrastructure improvements, and updated tooling for data product development. The release includes support for the complete Google Marketing Platform, significant upgrades for application builders, and a generally available Looker Marketplace where customers can access and share data experiences.
“Looker is continuously evolving to meet the unique and ever growing needs of every business in the way that is best for them. Whether we’re providing multiple choices of cloud providers, the ability to customize data experiences, or the unique solutions coming from our deeper integration with Google Cloud, Looker continues to focus on delivering solutions that have maximum impact on the day-to-day business outcomes of our customers.”
Colin Zima, Head of Looker Analytics and Strategy, Google Cloud
Modern BI Features
Several new and revamped BI features make it easier for business users to extract actionable insights from data without requiring deep technical expertise.
Looker Blocks for Google Marketing Platform
Created in partnership with Google experts, these pre-built analytics blocks are designed to provide a shareable, customizable foundation for analyzing Google Marketing Platform advertising and web data. Key characteristics include:
- Interactive data exploration with light machine learning (ML) predictions embedded in views
- Direct links back into Google Marketing Platform to adjust active campaigns
- Pathways for pushing insights back into the platform
- Fully customizable experiences deployable from Looker Marketplace or the Looker Blocks Directory
The following blocks were made available at release:
- Google Analytics 360
- Campaign Manager + Display & Video 360
- Search Ads 360
- Google Ads Block (refreshed version)
Cross-Filtering in Dashboards
Cross-filtering enables users to slice any metric on one dashboard tile by any dimension surfaced in another tile—with a single click. This feature allows business users to self-serve exploratory analysis directly within a dashboard, surfacing patterns and customer insights that are not immediately apparent from a static view. It reduces dependency on analysts for ad hoc data slicing and supports a more iterative approach to data exploration.
Foundational Performance Improvements
This release included several infrastructure-level enhancements designed to reduce query costs, improve response times, and make better use of existing data infrastructure investments:
- Aggregate awareness: Queries are routed to pre-aggregated tables where possible, reducing compute costs and improving query speed.
- Parallel persistent derived table (PDT) builds: Increases the number of PDTs that can be built simultaneously per connection, reducing wait times in environments with complex data models.
- Faster data downloads: Streaming query results are delivered more quickly when exporting data.
- Pooled database connections: Connection pooling reduces query latency by reusing existing database connections rather than establishing new ones for each query.
Developer and Model Tooling Enhancements
Redesigned Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
The Looker IDE received a significant redesign focused on making LookML development workflows more intuitive. Improvements include:
- More advanced controls for model developers
- An object browser that simplifies navigation and enables reuse of available objects
- Single shared repositories that can be used across multiple Looker instances
- Project folders for improved organization and team collaboration
System Administrator Controls
Administrators in large enterprise deployments gained more granular controls, including:
- Visibility into, and control over, system activity and usage patterns
- Improved user and group management tooling
- The ability to merge Looker-based permissions with corporate identity and access management systems
“Data is essential to our mission of delivering an innovative talent acquisition suite that empowers our customers to grow their companies and help people find jobs. The only way this continues to be sustainable and scalable is because Looker provides tools such as the elite systems activity manager that allows us to manage content, improve adoption, and audit user data over time.”
Zach Linder, VP Machine Learning & Data Analytics, Jobvite
Looker Marketplace and the Extension Framework
Looker Marketplace — Generally Available
Looker Marketplace reached general availability with this release. It serves as a central location where teams can access, deploy, and share data experiences—including all Looker Blocks and community-built custom applications. Teams can rapidly deploy third-party or internally developed applications to their own organization, and optionally share them with the broader Looker customer base. The Marketplace hosts all official Looker Blocks, including the COVID-19 Data Block launched earlier in 2020.
Data Dictionary Application
Available via the Marketplace, the Data Dictionary is a purpose-built application developed using Looker’s extension framework. It provides business users with a dedicated UI to locate the fields and metrics they need for analysis, while giving developers the ability to:
- Audit all LookML fields across a project
- Visualize relationships between datasets and Explores
- Identify the most frequently used data sets and flag duplicate Explores
Extension Framework — Generally Available
Originally announced in November as part of Looker 7, the extension framework reached general availability with this release. It allows developers to build fully customized data experiences within Looker and embed those experiences into existing enterprise applications and workflows—without requiring users to leave their primary tools.
“The National Response Portal was developed to help U.S. healthcare organizations, governments and the public to understand and respond to the impact of COVID-19. Looker’s ability to quickly integrate disparate data sources and rapidly iterate on visualizations was essential in our ability to launch the portal in the midst of a crisis. Looker’s unique extension framework gave us the ability to quickly build and integrate disparate data sources.”
Michael Ames, Sr. Director of Healthcare and Life Sciences, SADA (Google Cloud Premier Partner)
Summary
This August 2020 Looker release represents a broad push across the BI and analytics stack: improved self-service capabilities for business users via cross-filtering and Google Marketing Platform blocks, meaningful infrastructure optimizations for data engineering teams, and a more capable and generally available development ecosystem through the IDE redesign, Marketplace, and extension framework. For teams already invested in Google Cloud, the tighter marketing platform integration provides a direct path from raw advertising data to actionable insights without leaving the Looker environment.