Data Sources Management

Orion connects to three kinds of source: your data warehouse, the tools holding your business logic, and a few services that add outside context. Administrators connect each one once, at the tenant level.

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Accessing Data Sources

1. Go to Admin Settings in the left-hand navigation menu
2. Select Data Sources in the Admin Settings sidebar

Once access is set up on the source side (service accounts, API keys), this page is where those connection details are entered. BigQuery needs one value from Orion as well. The connection form shows the Orion service account that you grant access to in Google Cloud. You never have to ask us for it. See Connecting Data Sources for the full setup.

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How Data Sources Work

Data sources are configured at the tenant level and made globally available:

• Tenant-level setup - Administrators connect data sources once in Admin Settings
• Tenant-wide by default - Connected data sources are available across the tenant, subject to each user’s role and group membership
• Role limits - What a user can do with a data source depends on their role: Admins manage connections, Analysts query them, and Viewers query only where a project owner allows it
• Group scoping - Groups limit which data sources their members can use
• Project-level selection - Each project can choose which data sources to use
• Multiple data sources - A project can connect to multiple data sources simultaneously

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Supported Data Sources

Orion currently supports connections to:

• BigQuery - Google’s data warehouse platform
• ClickHouse - Column-oriented analytics database, queried with SQL
• Snowflake - Cloud data platform
• Databricks - Lakehouse data platform
• Redshift - Amazon’s cloud data warehouse
• Amazon Athena - Serverless SQL over data in S3, via the AWS Glue catalog
• Microsoft Fabric - Microsoft’s analytics warehouse
• PostgreSQL - Open-source relational database
• MySQL - Open-source relational database
• Delta Lake - Delta tables on cloud storage (ADLS Gen2 or GCS)
• MotherDuck - Hosted DuckDB, queried with DuckDB SQL
• ClickHouse - Column-oriented analytics database, queried over its HTTPS endpoint
• Looker - Dashboards, Looks, and LookML business logic
• dbt - Model metadata and lineage, used to enrich a warehouse connection

Two lightweight external-context sources round out the list:

• News API - News headlines pulled into analyses for external context (free newsapi.org key)
• Weather - Historical and forecast weather from Open-Meteo, no key required

For the credentials, grants, and step-by-step setup each source needs, see Connecting Data Sources. Beyond these tenant-level connections, users can also upload Excel files in chat and query them as ad hoc data sources for a single analysis. See File Uploads.

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Adding a Data Source

As an administrator, you can:

1. Click the Add Data Source tile
2. Select the type of data source from the supported list
3. Provide the necessary connection credentials and configuration
4. Save the connection

The data source is now available for all users to select when setting up projects.

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Managing Data Sources

Administrators can:

• Update credentials - Change connection details if needed
• Monitor status - Check the health of data source connections
• Disable or delete: pause use of a connection or remove it permanently
• View usage - See which projects are using each data source
• Auto-enable new schema - A switch on the data source’s Connection tab, on by default. Click Edit to change it. When it is off, databases and tables found by a later schema refresh stay disabled in each project until enabled in that project’s Schema Explorer. For Looker, the switch covers models and explores

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Disabling a Data Source

Disable a data source to stop all queries to it while keeping the connection for later.

1. Open the source in Admin Settings → Data Sources
2. Open the three-dot menu beside its name and choose Disable
3. Review which schedules stop, which items keep their last values, and which manual runs are blocked
4. Confirm with Disable

The review link opens Affected projects. Select a project to see its affected metrics, notebooks, and Workflows. Context pages appear under Shared items. While the source is disabled:

• Metrics and Workflows that use it stop running on their schedule and show a Disabled pill. Hover over the pill to see which data source is disabled. Run Now cannot query the source
• Dashboards and reports stay up with their last results. A Workflow dashboard shows a banner that names the data source
• The data source page shows a banner that links to the affected items. Refresh Now and Full Resync are unavailable

Nothing is deleted. Anything that only reads stored results keeps working.

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Enabling a Data Source Again

Choose Enable from the disabled source’s banner, the Affected projects panel, or its three-dot menu. Schedules restart once every data source they use is enabled and their project is not archived. Each one resumes at its next scheduled time. Runs skipped while the source was disabled do not run later, and schedules someone turned off stay off.

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Deleting a Data Source

Use Delete when the connection should be removed permanently. Choose Disable if you expect to use it again.

1. Open the source’s three-dot menu and choose Delete
2. Type the data source’s name to confirm
3. Select Delete

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Who Can Change Availability

Tenant Admins can enable or disable any data source. A Group Admin can do this for a source linked to their group. Deleting also requires permission to administer every project that uses the source. If another project prevents deletion, ask a Tenant Admin.