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Looker

Looker

Overview

What is Looker?

Looker is a BI application with an analytics-oriented application server that sits on top of relational data stores. It includes an end-user interface for exploring data, a reusable development paradigm for data discovery, and an API for supporting data in…

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Awards

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Pricing

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What is Looker?

Looker is a BI application with an analytics-oriented application server that sits on top of relational data stores. It includes an end-user interface for exploring data, a reusable development paradigm for data discovery, and an API for supporting data in other systems.

Entry-level set up fee?

  • Setup fee required
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://cloud.google.com/resources/look…

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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SAP Crystal is an analytics and reporting software solution for SMBs. SAP Crystal comprises Crystal Reports for pixel-perfect reporting, and SAP Crystal Server for automated distribution and self-service access to reports, dashboards and data exploration.

What is SAP Lumira Discovery?

SAP Lumira Discovery is SAP’s data visualization and discovery application. It facilitates data discovery, visualization, and analysis by assisting users with creation of dashboards, infographics, presentations, data facets, tag clouds, and more.

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Product Demos

How To Use Looker as a Business User

YouTube
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Features

BI Standard Reporting

Standard reporting means pre-built or canned reports available to users without having to create them.

8
Avg 8.1

Ad-hoc Reporting

Ad-Hoc Reports are reports built by the user to meet highly specific requirements.

8.1
Avg 8.0

Report Output and Scheduling

Ability to schedule and manager report output.

8.5
Avg 8.3

Data Discovery and Visualization

Data Discovery and Visualization is the analysis of multiple data sources in a search for patterns and outliers and the ability to represent the data visually.

6.7
Avg 8.0

Access Control and Security

Access control means being able to determine who has access to which data.

8.3
Avg 8.5

Mobile Capabilities

Support for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

5.8
Avg 7.8
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Product Details

What is Looker?

Looker, Google Cloud’s business intelligence platform, enables users to chat with data. Organizations are given self-service and governed BI to build custom applications with trusted metrics, or to bring Looker modeling to their existing environment.


Looker vs. Looker Studio


Looker Studio is a part of Google's Looker Suite for business intelligence. Looker Studio is a self-serve BI solution where less technical users can create charts and reports, while Looker is a complete, enterprise BI platform, where technical users can build complex models that consider every aspect of the business. Looker Studio offers both free and pro versions, while Looker is not available for free. Looker and Looker Studio integrate with each other to support both types of analysis at businesses.

Looker Features

BI Platform Features

  • Supported: Administration via Web Interface
  • Supported: Live Connection to External Data
  • Supported: In-memory data model
  • Supported: Multi-Data Source Reporting (Blending)
  • Supported: Data warehouse / dictionary layer

Supported Data Sources Features

  • Supported: Oracle
  • Supported: MS SQL Server
  • Supported: IBM DB2
  • Supported: Postgres
  • Supported: MySQL
  • Supported: Cloudera Hadoop
  • Supported: Hortonworks Hadoop
  • Supported: EMC Greenplum
  • Supported: IBM Netezza
  • Supported: HP Vertica
  • Supported: ParAccel
  • Supported: SAP Hana
  • Supported: Teradata
  • Supported: Sage 500
  • Supported: SAP

BI Standard Reporting Features

  • Supported: Pixel Perfect reports
  • Supported: Customizable dashboards
  • Supported: Report Formatting Templates

Ad-hoc Reporting Features

  • Supported: Drill-down analysis
  • Supported: Formatting capabilities
  • Supported: Integration with R or other statistical packages
  • Supported: Report sharing and collaboration

Report Output and Scheduling Features

  • Supported: Publish to Web
  • Supported: Publish to PDF
  • Supported: Output Raw Supporting Data
  • Supported: Report Versioning
  • Supported: Report Delivery Scheduling

Data Discovery and Visualization Features

  • Supported: Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
  • Supported: Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
  • Supported: Support for Machine Learning models
  • Supported: Integration with R or other statistical packages

Access Control and Security Features

  • Supported: Multi-User Support (named login)
  • Supported: Role-Based Security Model
  • Supported: Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
  • Supported: Report-Level Access Control
  • Supported: Table-Level Access Control (BI-layer)
  • Supported: Field-Level Access Control (BI-layer)

Mobile Capabilities Features

  • Supported: Responsive Design for Web Access
  • Supported: Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile

Looker Screenshots

Screenshot of a Looker dashboard with a geo chart.

Looker Video

The future of Looker is powered by generative AI—Google's vision for what's next in business intelligence

Looker Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsWindows, Linux, Mac
Mobile ApplicationNo
Supported CountriesUnited States, Canada, United Kingdom, Mexico, Germany, France, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Brazil
Supported LanguagesEnglish

Frequently Asked Questions

Looker is a BI application with an analytics-oriented application server that sits on top of relational data stores. It includes an end-user interface for exploring data, a reusable development paradigm for data discovery, and an API for supporting data in other systems.

Domo, MicroStrategy Analytics, and Tableau Server are common alternatives for Looker.

Reviewers rate Report Delivery Scheduling highest, with a score of 8.9.

The most common users of Looker are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews From Top Reviewers

(1-5 of 117)

Easy to use!

Rating: 10 out of 10
November 17, 2018
PP
Vetted Review
Verified User
Looker
1 year of experience
[It's] Used by multiple departments across the whole organization. It allows people to quickly view complex data, and share it with others. Easier to use than Tableau.
  • Visualization, easy manipulation.
  • Business leaders do not need-- nor do they want-- to write SQL to get the data and then visualize it.
  • Graphs and spaces that can be shared with other users.
Cons
  • Little pop overs or tips that appear as you hover mouse over an object.
Small to medium sized businesses are perfect for Looker.

Easy to upload, easy to use!

Rating: 9 out of 10
September 21, 2024
Vetted Review
Verified User
Looker
1 year of experience
I create a visual presentation of data each quarter to present to leadership. It's especially great to highlight my monthly metrics and showcase how I'm going above and beyond the current expectations for my goals. It allows me to show how consistent my data is for each day, not condensed into only a few days of productivity over a month.
  • Visually engaging.
  • Minimal background noise, use of white space is great.
  • Easy to upload data from different sources.
Cons
  • Massive amount of data being automatically uploaded on a regular cadence.
Easy, free tool to upload data to be presented and highlight critical factors.

Nice and easy to use solution!

Rating: 8 out of 10
March 18, 2024
Vetted Review
Verified User
Looker
3 years of experience
Looker is the best tool for serving visualization purposes for the companies who are using GCP; we utilize majority of our dashboards with Looker, as it is easy to work with, and highly integrable with other data sources. Time-to-value is important and since BigQuery was the underlying solution for our datasets, Looker's was the most convenient visualization solution for data democratization.
  • Integration with numerous datas ources
  • Not steep learning curve, anyone with less tech knowledge can work on that
  • Compatible with GA for Firebase
  • Good functionalities for visual exploratory data analysis
Cons
  • Variety of visualisations
  • Colour codings are not intuitive
  • More finetuning for visualizations needed (Like PowerBI)
Easy to use for the non coders and less techy people. Smooth onboarding on the platform and accessible guide and walkthrough available. The solution is scalable and can answer almost any kind of huge datasets. Looker is doing great for e-Commerce's analytics as it provides out of the box templates for visualizations.

Versatile, easy to use data reporting tool.

Rating: 10 out of 10
September 20, 2024
JJ
Vetted Review
Verified User
Looker
1 year of experience
We use Looker Studio to create customizable but bespoke reports on clients' marketing and sales activities. When clients come to us with a reporting issue, we use Looker Studio to deliver the result.
  • Data visualisation.
  • Reporting.
  • Aggregating multiple data sources via connectors.
Cons
  • More granular sharing options (integrating with Microsoft AD for example).
  • Out-of-the-box integrations (rather than using 3rd party components).
  • Direct PowerPoint export (not via google sheets or a 3rd party).
It's incredibly versatile and swift to create a proof-of-concept dashboard. We have turned projects around in a fraction of the time it would have taken with other products, such as PowerBI. It's also easier to get clients to use it, as it's free to use, unlike the more limited offering Power BI provides for free.

A BI Tool that is powerful and Easy to Use

Rating: 9 out of 10
November 03, 2017
Vetted Review
Verified User
Looker
1 year of experience
The Analytics team at my business uses Looker as a reporting tool for Business Intelligence. Looker allows my team to automate reporting. These reports are then used across the whole organisation by various teams. Although other teams do not directly deal with Looker, their functioning certainly depends on the great features that Looker offers.
  • Automation of reports.
  • Easy drag and drop interface for most functionalities.
  • Great variety of reporting options.
  • Works well with large data in terms of performance.
Cons
  • Setting up looker is quite tedious.
  • It takes a considerable amount of time to get handy with the features on Looker .
  • Need to configure database separately every time you want to connect a new database.
Looker is strongly recommended as a Business Intelligence tool when you wish to work with huge amounts of data. Moreover, Looker capitalizes on the power of your own database, and does not have its own analytics engine. This cuts down cost and makes it more performance-oriented.

On the other hand, if you are looking for out-of-the-box trends or data patterns, Looker is not the right tool for you.
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