Delphi x Looker
You can now use Delphi with Looker
Looker has been the most successful semantic layer product of the last decade. LookML is the killer feature that makes Looker so loved by the data teams who use it.
There are many hundreds of organisations across the world who have Looker, and Looker has APIs that allow for a tool like Delphi to interact directly with its semantic layer without needing to use the BI interface.
Now, it is possible to ask natural language questions, using AI with Delphi, on the semantic layer that you’ve defined in LookML 🥳!
Connecting is as straightforward as inputting your Looker REST API URL, with your Client ID and Secret, once it has been generated for your appropriate user in Looker.
From here, you can ask Delphi what it knows about your organisation from your Looker instance:
It’s a good idea to give Delphi restricted access to well-used explores, but not experimental ones.
Dashboard bloat was a big problem I encountered when running a data team that used Looker. Many people would make dashboards which were very similar to other ones that already existed, and often this was because they couldn’t find the original ones.
Delphi uses semantic search to share the most similar dashboards to the question asked, helping to reduce dashboard bloat by surfacing relevant, existing content. We also include social context, so that users can see who made the dashboard and we rank the content by factors such as how heavily it is used. This gives users a good chance of finding the best existing work that can safely answer their question.
You can then also take this to explore in Looker by clicking the “📊Looker” button, above.
It’s also possible to see the body of the Looker API request made to get the results by clicking the “🔍Query” button.
When answers to questions are validated using the 👍 button, they are then offered as safe solutions to future similar questions. In this way, Delphi is a learning system that improves with time, once it’s been deployed at an organisation. Further fine-tuning of the LLMs we use can improve answers even more, once a critical mass of questions has been asked.
We will support Looker Modeller in the near future too, and we have been accepted onto the GCP AI startup program 🎉.
If you’re interested in trying out Delphi, go to app.delphihq.com and click “Sign Up”! 🦾
Alternatively, if you’d rather talk about your particular needs, please book a call with me here.