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 historical_licenses
table in this repository, by referencing it like:
"cityofnewyork-us/historical-licenses-m4ph-grrm:latest"."historical_licenses"
or in a full query, like:
SELECT
":id", -- Socrata column ID
"license_status", -- This indicates the status of the license as of the license status date.
"address_zip", -- Postcode where the business is located. If an individual license, the postcode of the licensee's mailing address.
"address_state", -- State where the business is located. If an individual license, the State of the licensee's mailing address.
"address_city", -- City where the business is located. If an individual license, the City of the licensee's mailing address.
"secondary_address_street", -- The secondary cross street of the business's location.
"ct2020", -- he Census Tract (Census 2020) field indicates the U.S. Census Tract where the building is located.
"bbl", -- The BBL (Borough, Block, and Lot) is a unique identifier for each tax lot in the City
"bin", -- The BIN (Building Identification Number) is a unique identifier for each building in the City
"longitude", -- Longitude of the building's location
"latitude", -- Latitude of the building's location
"council_district", -- The City Council District where the business is located.
"community_board", -- The Community District where the business is located.
"address_street_name", -- Street name where the business is located.
"borough_code", -- Borough Code of the Borough where the business is located.
"address_building", -- Building number of the business's premise address.
"business_name2", -- If applicable, the Doing-Business-As (DBA), or trade name.
"business_name", -- The legal business name as filed with the New York State Secretary of State or County Clerk or, if an individual, the person’s last name and first name.
"business_code_description", -- The business category or business activity requiring a DCA-issued license in order to operate legally.
"business_code", -- The code associated with the business category or business activity requiring a DCA-issued license in order to operate leally.
"license_status_date", -- The date the license status was last updated in the system.
"license_expiration_date", -- Expiration date of the License as of the last time the license was updated in the system.
"contact_phone_number", -- The phone number of the business.
"license_creation_date", -- The date the license record was created.
"dca_license_number", -- An identification number issued to businesses/individuals to operate legally for the duration of their license term.
"license_type", -- Indicates whether the licensee is a business or an individual.
"borough", -- Borough in which the building is located
"nta2020" -- The Neighborhood Tabulation Area (Census 2020) field indicates the New York City Neighborhood area where the building is located
FROM
"cityofnewyork-us/historical-licenses-m4ph-grrm:latest"."historical_licenses"
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/historical-licenses-m4ph-grrm
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; sgr
can 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 clone
and sgr checkout
.
Cloning Data
Because cityofnewyork-us/historical-licenses-m4ph-grrm: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/historical-licenses-m4ph-grrm
Checkout 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/historical-licenses-m4ph-grrm:latest
This will download all the objects for the latest
tag of cityofnewyork-us/historical-licenses-m4ph-grrm
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/historical-licenses-m4ph-grrm: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/historical-licenses-m4ph-grrm:latest
This 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/historical-licenses-m4ph-grrm
is just another Postgres schema.