If you already connected your database during the installation, you’ve probably covered a lot of this territory. But if you need to add another database or manage the settings of one you already have connected, just click the settings icon in the top right of Metabase and select Admin.
Cool, now you’re in the administration section of Metabase. Next, select Databases from the menu bar at the top of the screen to see your databases.
Now you’ll see a list of your databases. To connect another database to Metabase, click Add database. Metabase currently supports the following types of databases:
Don’t see the database you need here? Take a look at our Community Drivers page to see if somebody else has built one or how to get started building your own.
To add a database, you’ll need its connection information.
If you’re experiencing errors when connecting to your database, check our troubleshooting guide for help.
Metabase automatically tries to connect to databases with and without SSL. If it is possible to connect to your database with a SSL connection, Metabase will make that the default setting for your database. You can always change this setting later if you prefer to connect without this layer of security, but we highly recommend keeping SSL turned on to keep your data secure.
By default, Metabase performs a lightweight hourly sync of your database, and a nightly deeper analysis of the fields in your tables to power some of Metabase’s features, like filter widgets.
If you’d like to change these default settings, find and click on your database in the Databases section of the Admin Panel, and turn on the toggle at the bottom of the form that says “This is a large database, so let me choose when Metabase syncs and scans.” (This is an option that used to be called “Enable in-depth analysis.”)
Save your changes, and you’ll see a new tab at the top of the form called “Scheduling.” Click on that, and you’ll see options to change when and how often Metabase syncs and scans.
Metabase maintains its own information about the various tables and fields in each database that is added to aid in querying. By default, Metabase performs this lightweight sync hourly to look for changes to the database such as new tables or fields. Metabase does not copy any data from your database. It only maintains lists of the tables and columns.
Syncing can be set to hourly, or daily at a specific time. Syncing can’t be turned off completely, otherwise Metabase wouldn’t work.
If you’d like to sync your database manually at any time, click on it from the Databases list in the admin panel and click on the Sync database schema now button on the right side of the screen:
By default, Metabase will auto-run queries when you use the Summarize and Filter buttons when viewing a table or chart. If your users are exploring data that is stored in a slow database, you may want to turn the auto-run off to avoid re-running the query every time your users change an option in the Summarize view. Turning this off presents the users with the option to re-run the query when they choose to.
When Metabase first connects to your database, it takes a look at the metadata of the fields in your tables and automatically assigns them a field type. Metabase also takes a sample of each table to look for URLs, JSON, encoded strings, etc. If a field is classified wrong, you can always manually edit it from the Metadata tab in the Admin Panel.
By default, Metabase also performs a more intensive daily sampling of each field’s values and caches the distinct values in order to make checkbox and select filters work in dashboards and SQL/native questions. This process can slow down large databases, so if you have a particularly large database, you can turn on the option to choose when Metabase scans, and select one of three scan options in the Scheduling tab:
Customer ID and another one called ID, only those two fields would be scanned at the moment the filter is saved.If for some reason you need to flush out the cached field values for your database, click the button that says “Discard saved field values” in the top-right of the database’s page.
To re-scan a specific table, go to the Data Model section of the Admin Panel, select the table from the list, and click the gear icon in the top right of the page. Similarly, to do this for just a specific field, on the same Data Model page, find the field you want and click the gear icon on the far right of the field’s name and options.
On either the table settings or field settings page, you’ll see these options:
To delete a database from Metabase, click on Remove this database from the database detail screen.
You can also delete a database from the database list: hover over the row with the database you want to remove and click the Delete button that appears.
Caution: Deleting a database is irreversible! All saved questions and dashboard cards based on the database will be deleted as well!
Metabase has the ability to connect to some databases by first establishing a connection to a server in between Metabase and a data warehouse, then connect to the data warehouse using that connection as a bridge. This makes connecting to some data warehouses possible in situations that would otherwise prevent the use of Metabase.
There are two basic cases for using an SSH tunnel rather than connecting directly:
Sometimes when a data warehouse is inside an enterprise environment, direct connections are blocked by security devices such as firewalls and intrusion prevention systems. To work around this many enterprises offer a VPN, a bastion host, or both. VPNs are the more convenient and reliable option though bastion hosts are used frequently, especially with cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services where VPC (Virtual Private Clouds) don’t allow direct connections. Bastion hosts offer the option to first connect to a computer on the edge of the protected network, then from that computer establish a second connection to the data warehouse on the internal network and essentially patch these two connestions together. Using the SSH tunneling feature, Metabase is able to automate this process in many cases. If a VPN is available that should be used in preference to SSH tunneling.
When connecting though a bastion host:
Host parameter.Port parameter.SSH tunnel host parameter.SSH tunnel port parameter. This is usually 22, regardless of which data warehouse you are connecting to.SSH tunnel username and SSH tunnel password parameters.If you are unable to connect test your ssh credentials by connecting to the SSH server/Bastion Host using ssh directly:
ssh <SSH tunnel username>@<SSH tunnel host> -p <SSH tunnel port>
Another common case where direct connections are not possible is when connecting to a data warehouse that is only accessible locally and does not allow remote connections. In this case you will be opening an SSH connection to the data warehouse, then from there connecting back to the same computer.
localhost in the Host parameter. This is the name the serverPort parameter that you would use if you where sitting directly at the data warehouse host system.SSH tunnel host parameter.SSH tunnel port parameter. This is usually 22, regardless of which data warehouse you are connecting to.SSH tunnel username and SSH tunnel password parameters.If you have problems connecting verify the ssh host port and password by connecting manually using ssh or PuTTY on older windows systems.
While using an ssh tunnel makes it possible to use a data warehouse that is otherwise not accessible it is almost always preferable to use a direct connection when possible:
There are several inherent limitations to connecting through a tunnel:
This feature exists as a convenient wrapper around SSH and automates the common cases of connecting through a tunnel. It also makes connecting possible from systems that don’t have or allow shell access. Metabase uses a built in SSH client that does not depend on the installed system’s ssh client. This allows connecting from systems where it’s not possible to run SSH manually, it also means that Metabase cannot take advantage of authentication services provided by the system such as Windows Domain Authentication or Kerberos Authentication.
If you need to connect using a method not enabled by Metabase, you can often accomplish this by running ssh directly:
ssh -Nf -L input-port:internal-server-name:port-on-server username@bastion-host.domain.com
This allows you to use the full array of features included in ssh. If you find yourself doing this often, please let us know so we can see about making your process more convenient through Metabase.
Metabase can send emails for certain features, like email invites, but first you need to set up an email account.