Helpful Looker Tutorials
September 14, 2026 · Vistelio
A practical tutorial on exposing semi-structured BigQuery data in Looker: when to UNNEST inside a view, how to model repeated records as their own view, how to handle the native JSON type with JSON_VALUE and JSON_QUERY, and how to keep fanout and query cost under control.
Read moreSeptember 14, 2026
BI Engine is the cheapest dashboard-latency win available to a Looker team on BigQuery, and most instances use it badly or not at all. This tutorial covers how BI Engine acceleration actually works, which Looker query patterns it accepts, how to size a reservation, how to prove hit rates from INFORMATION_SCHEMA and System Activity, and how to model LookML so your tiles stay in the accelerated path.
Read moreSeptember 11, 2026 · Vistelio
LookML has Git. The dashboards, Looks, folders, boards and schedules your business actually opens do not. This tutorial shows how to export and import user-created Looker content between dev, QA and production instances with gzr and Looker Deployer, how to remap folders and models, and how to keep the whole thing in a repeatable pipeline.
Read moreSeptember 10, 2026 · Vistelio
Most Looker tuning advice assumes BigQuery. This tutorial walks through what changes when your LookML model sits on Snowflake or Databricks SQL: connection settings, temp schemas for PDTs, warehouse sizing, query killing, and the dialect-specific LookML you should be writing.
Read moreSeptember 9, 2026 · Vistelio
Your LookML is in Git; your permission model probably is not. This tutorial shows how to define Looker instance configuration — permission sets, model sets, roles, groups, and user attributes — in a spec file, reconcile it idempotently with the Looker Python SDK, manage the stable parts in Terraform, and run a nightly drift check in CI.
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