Getting the connection credentials

Log in to the Google Console.
Select the appropriate project:
From the menu, select IAM & Admin and then Service accounts:
Select Create service account and fill in the dialog box as follows:
- Service account name: Enter looker-spanner-service or something similar.
- Role: Select Cloud Spanner and then Cloud Spanner Database Reader.
- Furnish a new private key: Select the Furnish a new private key checkbox, and select JSON under Key type.
Click Create and keep track of the following:
- The email address associated with the service account
- The name and location of the JSON credential file that was downloaded

Creating the Looker connection

In the Admin section of Looker, select Connections, and then select New Connection.
Fill out the connection details (see the Connecting Looker to your database documentation page for more information):
- Dialect: Google Cloud Spanner.
- Name: The name of the connection.
- Project Name: The project ID for the Google project that contains the Spanner database.
- Instance Name: The name of the instance that contains the Spanner database.
- Database: The name of the Spanner database.
- Schema: Leave this blank.
- Max Connections: The maximum number of total connections to the Spanner database across all users. The default is 30.
- Connection Pool Timeout: The number of seconds a query will wait before timing out because of a full connection pool.
- Additional Params: Any additional JDBC driver parameters.
Click Test These Settings to verify a connection.
Click Add Connection.

For Looker to support some features, your database dialect must also support them.

In Looker 22.6, Google Cloud Spanner supports the following Looker features:

After you have connected your database to Looker, configure sign-in options for your users.