colorado-gov/alternative-energy-laws-and-incentives-in-colorado-nxw4-ev8w
Icon for Socrata external plugin

Query the Data Delivery Network

Query the DDN

The 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 alternative_energy_laws_and_incentives_in_colorado table in this repository, by referencing it like:

"colorado-gov/alternative-energy-laws-and-incentives-in-colorado-nxw4-ev8w:latest"."alternative_energy_laws_and_incentives_in_colorado"

or in a full query, like:

SELECT
    ":id", -- Socrata column ID
    "usercategories", -- Search by the user type. A single type, or a comma-separate list of multiple types, may be given. Values and what they stand for are as follows: 'IND' for Vehicle Owner/Driver, 'FLEET' for Fleet Purchaser/Manager, 'STATION' for Fueling / TSE Infrastructure Owner, 'AFP' for Alternative Fuel Producer, 'AFS' for Alternative Fuel Dealer, 'PURCH' for Alternative Fuel Purchaser, 'MAN' for AFV Manufacturer/Retrofitter, and 'OTHER' for Other
    "regulationcategories", -- Search by the regulation type. A single type, or a comma-separate list of multiple types, may be given. Values and what they stand for are as follows: 'REGIS' for Registration / Licensing, 'STD' for Fuel Production / Quality, 'DREST' for Driving / Idling, 'REQ' for Acquisition / Fuel Use, 'FUEL' for Fuel Taxes, 'RFS' for Renewable Fuel Standard / Mandate, 'OTHER' for Other, 'AIRQEMISSIONS' for Air Quality / Emissions, and 'CCEINIT' for Climate Change / Energy Initiatives
    "incentivecategories", -- Search by the technology type. A single type, or a comma-separate list of multiple types, may be given. Values and what they stand for are as follows: 'BIOD' for Biodiesel, 'ETH' for Ethanol, 'NG' for Natural Gas, 'LPG' for Propane (LPG), 'HY' for Hydrogen Fuel Cells, 'EFFEC' for Fuel Economy / Efficiency, 'IR' for Idle Reduction, 'ELEC' for EVs, 'HEV' for HEVs / PHEVs, 'OTHER' for Other, 'AFTMKTCONV' for Aftermarket Conversions, and 'NEVS' for NEVs
    "lawid", -- A unique identifier for this specific incentive/law/regulation.
    "references", -- Source of information if available
    "technologycategories", -- Search by the technology type. A single type, or a comma-separate list of multiple types, may be given. Values and what they stand for are as follows: 'BIOD' for Biodiesel, 'ETH' for Ethanol, 'NG' for Natural Gas, 'LPG' for Propane (LPG), 'HY' for Hydrogen Fuel Cells, 'EFFEC' for Fuel Economy / Efficiency, 'IR' for Idle Reduction, 'ELEC' for EVs, 'HEV' for HEVs / PHEVs, 'OTHER' for Other, 'AFTMKTCONV' for Aftermarket Conversions, and 'NEVS' for NEVs
    "topic", -- For local incentive/regulation descriptions, the category that the incentive/regulation falls under, described below: Infrastructure Requirements, Vehicle Purchase and Infrastructure Development Incentives, Fuel Use Incentives, Parking Incentives, Technical Assistance, Vehicle Acquisition Requirements, Promotion Initiatives, Idle Reduction Requirements, Renewable Fuels Mandates and Standards
    "significantupdatedate", -- When the last significant update to the law was made.
    "type", -- The category that the incentive/law/regulation falls under, described below: -State Incentives, -Laws and Regulations, -Utility/Private Incentives,
    "amendeddate", -- The date the incentive/law/regulation was updated through new legislation or rulemaking.
    "title", -- The brief title assigned to the incentive/law/regulation description.
    "agency", -- The agency with primary responsibility for federal incentives/regulations.
    "repealeddate", -- The date legislation is enacted or a rulemaking is finalized to repeal the incentive/law/regulation.
    "sequencenumber", -- The numerical value assigned to a description to show the order in which it is displayed online within a jurisdiction (state).
    "isrecent", -- The true or false value used to distinguish between recent federal executive actions (TRUE) and active incentives/laws/regulations (FALSE).
    "archiveddate", -- The date that an incentive/law/regulation is no longer relevant to the database. This may include longstanding Executive Orders or laws requiring legislative studies that have been completed.
    "enacteddate", -- The date the enacting legislation (if applicable) was signed into law.
    "text", -- Description of the incentive/law/regulation, including applicable legislative references, html formated
    "expireddate" -- The date the incentive/law/regulation is set to end.
FROM
    "colorado-gov/alternative-energy-laws-and-incentives-in-colorado-nxw4-ev8w:latest"."alternative_energy_laws_and_incentives_in_colorado"
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 colorado-gov/alternative-energy-laws-and-incentives-in-colorado-nxw4-ev8w with SQL in under 60 seconds.

This repository is an "external" repository. That means it's hosted elsewhere, in this case at data.colorado.gov. When you querycolorado-gov/alternative-energy-laws-and-incentives-in-colorado-nxw4-ev8w:latest on the DDN, we "mount" the repository using the socrata mount handler. The mount handler proxies your SQL query to the upstream data source, translating it from SQL to the relevant language (in this case SoQL).

We also cache query responses on the DDN, but we run the DDN on multiple nodes so a CACHE_HIT is only guaranteed for subsequent queries that land on the same node.

Query Your Local Engine

Install Splitgraph Locally
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 (like this repository), 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, where the author has pushed Splitgraph Images to the repository, you can "clone" and/or "checkout" the data using sgr cloneand sgr checkout.

Mounting Data

This repository is an external repository. It's not hosted by Splitgraph. It is hosted by data.colorado.gov, and Splitgraph indexes it. This means it is not an actual Splitgraph image, so you cannot use sgr clone to get the data. Instead, you can use the socrata adapter with the sgr mount command. Then, if you want, you can import the data and turn it into a Splitgraph image that others can clone.

First, install Splitgraph if you haven't already.

Mount the table with sgr mount

sgr mount socrata \
  "colorado-gov/alternative-energy-laws-and-incentives-in-colorado-nxw4-ev8w" \
  --handler-options '{
    "domain": "data.colorado.gov",
    "tables": {
        "alternative_energy_laws_and_incentives_in_colorado": "nxw4-ev8w"
    }
}'

That's it! Now you can query the data in the mounted table like any other Postgres table.

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, colorado-gov/alternative-energy-laws-and-incentives-in-colorado-nxw4-ev8w is just another Postgres schema.