Before configuring Looker to work with Teradata, you must install the hash_md5 user-defined function (UDF) on your Teradata server. You can find instructions for installing the UDF on this Teradata downloads page.

To use Looker with Teradata you will need to configure a Teradata driver. These instructions describe that process, assuming use of a startup script similar to the examples provided on this Looker Github page.

To install the driver, you will need to acquire two Teradata files, include them as part of the startup process, and add an option to tell Looker to access the driver.

Installing the Teradata JDBC driver

Follow the steps on the Unpackaged JDBC drivers documentation page using the following values:

driver symbol: teradata

driver entry:

- name: teradata
  dir_name: teradata
  module_path: com.teradata.jdbc.TeraDriver

For the step to put the driver in your dialect’s directory, the paths to these files will look like this:
looker/custom_jdbc_drivers/teradata/tdgssconfig.jar
looker/custom_jdbc_drivers/teradata/terajdbc4.jar

Connecting Looker to Teradata

Configure a database connection via the Looker interface. From the Admin section, select Connections then New Connection. See the Connecting Looker to your database documentation page for more information.

Click on Test These Settings to verify the connection is successful. The Testing database connectivity documentation page has troubleshooting information.

Feature support

For Looker to support some features, your database dialect must also support them. In Looker 22.6, Teradata supports the following Looker features: