Query the Data Delivery Network
Query the DDNThe easiest way to query any data on Splitgraph is via the "Data Delivery Network" (DDN). The DDN is a single endpoint that speaks the PostgreSQL wire protocol. Any Splitgraph user can connect to it at data.splitgraph.com:5432 and query any version of over 40,000 datasets that are hosted or proxied by Splitgraph.
For example, you can query the civil_service_list_active table in this repository, by referencing it like:
"cityofnewyork-us/civil-service-list-active-vx8i-nprf:latest"."civil_service_list_active"or in a full query, like:
SELECT
":id", -- Socrata column ID
"residency_credit", -- An additional credit given on an exam to a candidate who maintains a continuous period of residency in New York City as described in the Notice of Examination for a specific title.
"list_title_desc", -- A descriptive name that identifies a civil service title.
"published_date", -- The date on which an eligible list is made available for review by the general public and appointing agencies.
"list_agency_desc", -- The name of an appointing Agency.
"last_name", -- A candidate’s last name as it appears on their application.
"list_agency_code", -- A three (3) digit number used to identify an agency (For Promotion List Only).
"list_title_code", -- A five (5) digit number that corresponds to and represents a civil service title.
"exam_no", -- A four (4) digit number that identifies a civil service examination.
"anniversary_date", -- The date on which an eligible list is scheduled to expire.
"list_div_code", -- The promotional division codes/descriptions within the New York City Transit Authority only.
"group_no", -- Represents the certification order for a list. (e.g. – eligible candidates on a list with a 01 group number may be considered for appointment before an eligible candidate on primary list with a 00 group number).
"mi", -- A candidate’s middle initial (MI) as it appears on their application.
"veteran_credit", -- An additional credit given to a Veteran (5 points) or disabled veteran (10 points) when s/he accepts a permanent position from an eligible list.
"adj_fa", -- The Adjusted Final Average (“Adj. FA” or “AFA”) is an eligible candidate’s test score in addition to any additional credits granted.
"extension_date", -- The date on which a list will be extended beyond its original expiration date.
"sibling_lgy_credit", -- A “Sibling Legacy Credit” is additional credit given on an exam (10 points) to a candidate who lost a sibling (FDNY, NYPD, or a First Responder, during or as a result of 911).
"parent_lgy_credit", -- A “Parent Legacy credit” is an additional credit given on an exam (10 points) to a candidate who lost a parent (FDNY, NYPD, or a First Responder, during or as a result of 911).
"established_date", -- The date on which an eligible list is made available for certification to agencies to consider an eligible candidate for appointment.
"list_no", -- An eligible candidate’s placement on a given list as of the business day that the data set is populated.
"first_name" -- A candidate’s first name as it appears on their application.
FROM
"cityofnewyork-us/civil-service-list-active-vx8i-nprf:latest"."civil_service_list_active"
LIMIT 100;Connecting to the DDN is easy. All you need is an existing SQL client that can connect to Postgres. As long as you have a SQL client ready, you'll be able to query cityofnewyork-us/civil-service-list-active-vx8i-nprf with SQL in under 60 seconds.
Query Your Local Engine
bash -c "$(curl -sL https://github.com/splitgraph/splitgraph/releases/latest/download/install.sh)"Read the installation docs.
Splitgraph Cloud is built around Splitgraph Core (GitHub), which includes a local Splitgraph Engine packaged as a Docker image. Splitgraph Cloud is basically a scaled-up version of that local Engine. When you query the Data Delivery Network or the REST API, we mount the relevant datasets in an Engine on our servers and execute your query on it.
It's possible to run this engine locally. You'll need a Mac, Windows or Linux system to install sgr, and a Docker installation to run the engine. You don't need to know how to actually use Docker; sgrcan manage the image, container and volume for you.
There are a few ways to ingest data into the local engine.
For external repositories, the Splitgraph Engine can "mount" upstream data sources by using sgr mount. This feature is built around Postgres Foreign Data Wrappers (FDW). You can write custom "mount handlers" for any upstream data source. For an example, we blogged about making a custom mount handler for HackerNews stories.
For hosted datasets (like this repository), where the author has pushed Splitgraph Images to the repository, you can "clone" and/or "checkout" the data using sgr cloneand sgr checkout.
Cloning Data
Because cityofnewyork-us/civil-service-list-active-vx8i-nprf:latest is a Splitgraph Image, you can clone the data from Spltgraph Cloud to your local engine, where you can query it like any other Postgres database, using any of your existing tools.
First, install Splitgraph if you haven't already.
Clone the metadata with sgr clone
This will be quick, and does not download the actual data.
sgr clone cityofnewyork-us/civil-service-list-active-vx8i-nprfCheckout the data
Once you've cloned the data, you need to "checkout" the tag that you want. For example, to checkout the latest tag:
sgr checkout cityofnewyork-us/civil-service-list-active-vx8i-nprf:latestThis will download all the objects for the latest tag of cityofnewyork-us/civil-service-list-active-vx8i-nprf and load them into the Splitgraph Engine. Depending on your connection speed and the size of the data, you will need to wait for the checkout to complete. Once it's complete, you will be able to query the data like you would any other Postgres database.
Alternatively, use "layered checkout" to avoid downloading all the data
The data in cityofnewyork-us/civil-service-list-active-vx8i-nprf:latest is 0 bytes. If this is too big to download all at once, or perhaps you only need to query a subset of it, you can use a layered checkout.:
sgr checkout --layered cityofnewyork-us/civil-service-list-active-vx8i-nprf:latestThis will not download all the data, but it will create a schema comprised of foreign tables, that you can query as you would any other data. Splitgraph will lazily download the required objects as you query the data. In some cases, this might be faster or more efficient than a regular checkout.
Read the layered querying documentation to learn about when and why you might want to use layered queries.
Query the data with your existing tools
Once you've loaded the data into your local Splitgraph Engine, you can query it with any of your existing tools. As far as they're concerned, cityofnewyork-us/civil-service-list-active-vx8i-nprf is just another Postgres schema.