ETL

Looker on Snowflake and Databricks: Connection Setup, PDT Schemas, and Cost Controls

September 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.

Native Derived Tables Done Right (explore_source)

August 25, 2026

A native derived table is one built with explore_source, not a SQL table that happens to be ephemeral. This corrected guide shows real NDTs, derived columns, bind_filters, persistence with datagroups, when NDTs beat SQL derived tables, and when transformations belong in dbt instead.