Building with Looker made easier with the Extension Framework

Our goal is to continue to improve our platform functionalities, and find new ways to empower Looker developers to build data experiences much faster and at a lower upfront cost.

We’ve heard the developer community feedback and we’re excited to have announced the general availability of the Looker Extension Framework.

The Extension Framework is a fully hosted development platform that enables developers to build any data-powered application, workflow or tool right in Looker. By eliminating the need to spin up and host infrastructure, the Extension Framework lets developers focus on building great experiences for their users. Traditionally, customers and partners who build custom applications with Looker, have to assemble an entire development infrastructure before they can proceed with implementation. For instance, they might need to stand up both a back end and front end and then implement services for hosting and authorization. This leads to additional time and cost spent.

The Extension Framework eliminates all development inefficiency and helps significantly reduce friction in the setup and development process, so developers can focus on starting development right away. Looker developers would no longer need DevOps or infrastructure to host their data applications and these applications (when built on the Extension Framework), can take full advantage of the power of Looker. To enable these efficiencies, the Looker Extension Framework includes a streamlined way to leverage the Looker APIs and SDKs, UI components for building the visual experience, as well as authentication, permission management and application access control.