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 issued_licenses table in this repository, by referencing it like:
"cityofnewyork-us/issued-licenses-w7w3-xahh:latest"."issued_licenses"or in a full query, like:
SELECT
":id", -- Socrata column ID
"census_tract", -- The 2010 Census Tract where the business is located.
"longitude", -- The longitudinal coordinate where the business is located.
"address_city", -- The city where the business is located.
"census_block_2010_", -- The 2010 Census Block where the business is located.
"street3", -- The name of the street where the business is located.
"address_type", -- The type of address where the business is located.
"detail", -- Additional information about the license for certain business categories.
"contact_phone", -- The phone number of the business contact.
"license_creation_date", -- The date the license was originally issued.
"lic_expir_dd", -- The date the license term expired or will expire.
"license_status", -- Indicates the current status of the license.
"bbl", -- The Borough-Block-Lot number where the business is located.
"community_board", -- The NYC Community District where the business is located.
"business_unique_id", -- An identification number assigned by DCWP to track unique businesses across its systems.
"apt_suite", -- The unit number of the business' address.
"bin", -- The Building Identification Number where the business is located.
"council_district", -- The NYC City Council District where the business is located.
"unit_type", -- The type of unit of the business' address.
"nta", -- The Neighborhood Tabulation Area where the business is located.
"address_zip", -- The ZIP Code where the business is located.
"address_street_name", -- The name of the street where the business is located.
"license_type", -- Indicates whether the license is issued to an individual or an organization.
"address_state", -- The state where the business is located.
"business_category", -- The business activity or business category requiring a DCWP-issued license in order to operate legally within NYC.
"latitude", -- The latitudinal coordinate where the business is located.
"license_nbr", -- An identification number issued to a business or individual when their license application is approved by DCWP.
"address_building", -- The building number where the business is located.
"address_borough", -- The NYC Borough where the business is located.
"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 first name and last name.
"dba_trade_name", -- The "Doing Business As" or "Trade Name" registered with the NYS Department of State.
"address_street_name_2" -- The name of the cross street where the business is located.
FROM
"cityofnewyork-us/issued-licenses-w7w3-xahh:latest"."issued_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/issued-licenses-w7w3-xahh 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/issued-licenses-w7w3-xahh: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/issued-licenses-w7w3-xahhCheckout 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/issued-licenses-w7w3-xahh:latestThis will download all the objects for the latest tag of cityofnewyork-us/issued-licenses-w7w3-xahh 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/issued-licenses-w7w3-xahh: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/issued-licenses-w7w3-xahh: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/issued-licenses-w7w3-xahh is just another Postgres schema.