Help: Issues visualising Azure data in Looker Studio

[AndiDeng]

Hi!

Recently, I noticed that BQ allows connections with Azure platform, so we tried and managed to create External Tables in BQ with Azure Blob storage data.

Theoretically, I believe it’s possible to visualize these tables in Looker Studio with the BQ connector; however, while I was trying to add these BQ tables as data source in looker studio, I got the following error.

The rest of the data sets in Bigquery worked perfectly fine, and I can add all of them as data sources, except for the one(synapse) based on Azure data. I’m not sure what’s gone wrong, but maybe you guys know something. Therefore, it’ll be great if you could help me out!

[Aris_O]

Hi @AndiDeng,

Welcome to Google Cloud Community.

You might be seeing an error when attempting to add an Azure Blob storage External Table in BigQuery as a data source in Looker Studio.

Here are some checking you may try to perform to troubleshoot the problem:

• Verify that the External Table in the BigQuery project has the permissions needed to access the data in Azure Blob storage. Specifically, read access to the Azure Blob storage bucket is required by the Google Cloud Storage project service account (used to access the External Table). The Cloud Storage console has an access permissions checker and updater.
  
  
• Verify that BigQuery's definition of the Azure Blob storage External Table is correct. Check to see that the proper credentials (such the SAS token) are being used to access the data, as well as that the relevant Azure Blob storage account and container names are supplied. By executing a straightforward query on the External Table in the BigQuery console, you can test it.
  
  
• Verify for any specific characters or formatting in the Azure Blob storage data that might be interfering with Looker Studio's ability to connect to it. Looker might not be able to read the data correctly, for instance, if it has non-standard file formats or encoding.
  
  
• Verify if Looker Studio can access the Azure Blob storage data due to firewall constraints or network connectivity concerns. To check for faults or connectivity problems, try pinging the Azure Blob storage endpoint or looking through the network logs.

Here are some documentations that might help you:
https://cloud.google.com/looker/docs/db-config-microsoft-azure-sql-database?_ga=2.184433382.-1392753...
https://cloud.google.com/looker/docs/db-config-microsoft-azure-synapse-analytics?_ga=2.184433382.-13...
https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/docs/bi-engine-looker-studio?_ga=2.184433382.-1392753435.167665568...
https://cloud.google.com/looker/docs/looker-studio-connector?_ga=2.184433382.-1392753435.1676655686
https://cloud.google.com/looker/docs/db-config-microsoft-sql-server?_ga=2.184433382.-1392753435.1676...