Looker

What differentiates Looker from other similar products?

The main feature that differentiates Looker from other Business Intelligence tools is its LookML modeling layer. It assists in analyzing the reporting and makes it consistent to unify the data-metrics link. It further aids all the workers to work through a single source. Moreover, it keeps its focus on database analysis without extracting data.

What is your favorite aspect of this product?

My favorite aspect about this Looker is its centralized data modeling layer LookML. This aspect ensures the functioning of every worker from a single source to keep the consistency in the data. This helps sort out the issues that are normally generated due to the formation of reports from the data handled by different teams in different ways. Its ability to learn easily and deal with live data makes it preferable for me.

What do you dislike most about this product?

It is very user-friendly software and easy to learn. Although it is filled with all the latest features it comes with complete guidance regarding their working. Its customer service is very efficient in assisting its users in real time. So for me, there is nothing to dislike about it.

What recommendations would you give to someone considering this product?

It is a good to go for all those having issues with business intelligence. To utilize its features fully, one should learn some basic technical skills. By getting an initial understanding, data analysts can fully leverage Looker. All the given policies and tutorials help in insight into its functioning.

What differentiates Looker from other similar products?

Google Looker has an intuitive interface to build dashboards, a full SaaS offering with horizontal and vertical scaling, and also a code based semantic model for reusability.

What is your favorite aspect of this product?

Semantic model and ease of building dashboards.

What do you dislike most about this product?

Report bursting is a little more cumbersome as we need to use a webhook for some of our use cases.

What recommendations would you give to someone considering this product?

Work with a good implementation partner and take the Google Cloud Skills Boost training to get up to speed.

What differentiates Looker from other similar products?

The defining feature of Looker is as it has its own proprietary semantic modeling language called LookML. Looker, unlike visual drag-and-drop tools like Tableau, treats data logic as code. This enables associate developers like us to leverage Git version control, establish a git single source of truth with ease, and continuously deploy centralized metric definitions across the organization.

What is your favorite aspect of this product?

LookML IDE. From union of branches to thumbs up, as a junior dev I enjoy working with my work as separate branch and commit changes to data model and open PR for observation from peers. It integrates standard software engineering best practices into the analytics workflow, thus enabling much safer and easier collaboration.

What do you dislike most about this product?

Arguably the biggest obstacle is the learning curve that comes with LookML. It is a proprietary language, developers who are new to the database cannot get by on standard SQL knowledge cost.

What recommendations would you give to someone considering this product?

Take LookML Course before trying to build complex models. Enforce a naming convention and peer-review process ASAP. Finally, optimize your base data warehouse because Looker depends a lot on the performance of the underlying database to execute final complex SQL queries for visualizations in dashboards.