How to stop TinyInt converting to Boolean in Looker?

  • Datameer, Inc.
  • January 22, 2018
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PROBLEM STATEMENT:  

It has been observed that if we use Looker with a MySQL 5.6 connection, and if we query a tinyint column, the values are converted to boolean by Looker.

For Example:

Consider the following SQL where test_tiny_int column in the test_table holds tiny_int values

SELECT distinct test_tiny_int FROM test_table

The above query returns the following results in Looker

If you run the same query directly in MySQL, it returns the following result set:


Use cast function in LookML when defining the SQL parameter for the dimension so that the resulting SQL resolves to the following SOLUTION : 

SELECT distinct cast(test_tiny_int) FROM test_table

That is how to stop a TinyInt from converting to Boolean in Looker.


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