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Connecting Metabase to ClickHouse

Metabase is an easy-to-use, open source UI tool for asking questions about your data. Metabase is a Java application that can be executed by simply downloading the JAR file and running it with java -jar metabase.jar. Metabase connects to ClickHouse using a JDBC driver that you download and put in the plugins folder:

1. Download the ClickHouse plugin for Metabase​

  1. If you do not have a plugins folder, create one as a subfolder of where you have metabase.jar saved.

  2. The plugin is a JAR file named clickhouse.metabase-driver.jar. Download the latest version of the JAR file at https://github.com/enqueue/metabase-clickhouse-driver/releases/latest

  3. Save clickhouse.metabase-driver.jar in your plugins folder.

  4. Start (or restart) Metabase so that the driver gets loaded properly.

  5. Access Metabse at http://hostname:3000. On the initial startup, you will see a welcome screen and have to work your way through a list of questions. If prompted to select a database, select "I'll add my data later":

2. Connect Metabase to ClickHouse​

  1. Click on the gear icon in the top-right corner and select Admin Settings to visit your Metabase admin page.

  2. Click on Add a database. Alternately, you can click on the Databases tab and select the Add database button.

  3. If your driver installation worked, you will see ClickHouse in the dropdown menu for Database type:

    Add a ClickHouse database

  4. Give your database a Display name, which is a Metabase setting - so use any name you like.

  5. Enter the connection details of your ClickHouse database. For example:

    Connection details

  6. Click the Save button and Metabase will scan your database for tables.

3. Run a SQL query​

  1. Exit the Admin settings by clicking the Exit admin button in the top-right corner.

  2. In the top-right corner, click the + New menu and notice you can ask questions, run SQL queries, and build a dashboard:

    New menu

  3. For example, here is a SQL query executed on a table named hits that returns the top ten most-visited URLs:

    Run a SQL query

4. Ask a question​

  1. Click on + New and select Question. Notice you can build a question by starting wtih a database and table. For example, the following question is being asked of a table named hits in the Web Traffic Database:

    New question

  1. Here is a simple question that calculates the top 20 most-visited URLs in the table:

    New question

  2. Click the Visualize button to see the results in a tabular view.

  3. Below the results, click the Visualization button to change the visualization to a bar chart (or any of the other options avaialable):

    New question

  4. Find more information about Metabase and how to build dashboards by visiting the Metabase documentation.