Looker - Complete Guide to Google Looker - LookML Developer (Udemy.com)

Learn from more than 7 hours of relevant instructional video content, with the only complete beginner to expert guide on Google Looker Developer (LookML). Master the concepts of LookML and apply them to real-life settings.

Explore, analyze, visualize, and access your data with Google Looker. Looker is used as a sophisticated business intelligence (BI) and visualization software similar to Power BI and Tableau. Companies deploy Looker to their employees so that they can make trusted decisions and actions based on their data.

More than 2,000 organizations use Looker. Looker is named as a Visionary in Gartner's Magic Quadrant.

Looker is officially part of Google Cloud Platform. Google bought Looker in 2020 for more than $2.6 billion. This demonstrates Google's investment that Looker will be the top tier BI and visualization software of choice for companies across the world.

This is the only complete guide to Google Looker and LookML for the Developer, from beginner to expert. This course is not only comprehensive (it covers everything you need to know right from the start / beginner level with LookML) but is also instructional in nature, meaning that as we learn new concepts, we are also integrating them in the application. Don't just learn concepts, learn how to actually apply them. This is especially important with LookML. That also means that whether you are a beginner or expert, there's something for you in this course.

This course is structured in a way that helps you learn all the concepts. For each concept, we first cover it in theory and then apply it using a real life example. We also progressively learn more and more advanced concepts, so that you never feel overwhelmed and can achieve your goals. By the end of this course, you will be writing LookML to create Explores, Looks, Reports, and Dashboards.

Note: this is the Developer series. In this course, we learn everything that a developer of Google Looker would need to know. In particular, we focus on writing LookML to create Explores that a consumer (User / Analyst) would use. We cover topics such as connecting data, defining dimensions and measures, developing views, joining two views together, coding dashboards, etc.

If you instead want to learn the consumer view of Looker (analyzing data, creating reports, creating Looks, creating dashboards, organizing and sharing reports, creating custom fields, etc.), then please take the User / Analyst course instead. Feel free to watch the free preview of the Course Overview, or message me, if you have any questions.

Again, this is the complete guide to Google Looker and LookML for the Developer - you won't ever need another course.

This course is the Developer series. If you have not already, I highly recommend taking the User / Analyst series course first to explain how a consumer would use Looker.

What is Looker?

Looker is a business intelligence software and big data analytics platform that organizations use to empower their employees to explore, analyze, and share real-time business analytics and insights. It is part of the Google Cloud Platform after Google acquired Looker for over $2.6 billion.

What makes Looker different?

Looker is regarded as more than an alternative to Power BI or Tableau. It operates 100% on the cloud and is browser-based, which means that no desktop software is required or needs to be managed. It contains a trusted data model, and a language called LookML that allows users to compile data and assign business logic across the organization. It also contains powerful APIs and third-party connectors that are used to create workflows and apps from your data.

What is LookML?

LookML is a structured language used as an alternative to your ETL layer. Simply put, LookML is code for creating views, dimensions, measures, aggregations, calculations, and data relationships to transform your raw data into an Explore. Specifically, the purpose of LookML is to translate structured language (that's easy for users to write and manage) into SQL queries (which are hard to write and manage). Additionally, it can be used as code to create sophisticated dashboards.

What is the Developer Series?

Looker is used by two groups of people:

• User / Analyst - these are individuals who would use Looker to analyze data, build and consume reports / dashboards, create report workflows, and manage folders and boards. It is also for those people who are knew to Looker who want to understand how Looker works on the front-end before they start developing it. These are people like data analysts, business analysts, data scientists, product managers, department heads, and executives.

• Developer - these are individuals who would be responsible for setting up Looker, and have it connect and access the underlying SQL data. These people are the ones responsible for creating the underlying data model in LookML that is used by Users and Analysts. These are people like software developers, IT administrators, and data engineers.

This course is the Developer series.

What are the main features of Looker?

• LookML - structured model language that is used to construct SQL queries against a particular database; allows you to do complex operations such as joins, aggregations, and filters; and standardize business logic for common variables across your organization

• Cloud-based - Looker is 100% on the cloud, which has massive benefits like not needing to manage a desktop software, ease of deployment, and streamlined standardized user experiences

• Reports and dashboards - perform sophisticated analysis on your raw data and create related reports and dashboards to save and replay your work, with the ability to add custom filters

• Curative and user-friendly - Looker is easy to use with its no-code features and helper tools

• Data model - Looker lets you create a full data model in LookML that sits atop your raw data, which allows you to define relationships between all your data and standardize metrics