Question

A BI analyst at a retail company builds a Looker dashboard that must combine order data from a BigQuery Explore with campaign-cost data from a separate Google Ads Explore that share only a common date and campaign_id. The two datasets live in different connections and Explores, and the analyst cannot modify the underlying LookML model or add new joins. The combined report is run interactively a few times per day by a small team. Which Looker feature should the analyst use to blend these two query results?

Accepted Answer

Create a merged result in Looker that joins the two query results on date and campaign_id at query time

Answer

Build a persistent derived table (PDT) that UNIONs both Explores into one materialized table

Answer

Add a native derived table with an explore_source that references both Explores in the LookML model

Answer

Export both Explores to Connected Sheets and use VLOOKUP to combine the campaign costs