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 open_data_portal_datasets_austin_transportation table in this repository, by referencing it like:
"datahub-austintexas-gov/open-data-portal-datasets-austin-transportation-28ys-ieqv:latest"."open_data_portal_datasets_austin_transportation"or in a full query, like:
SELECT
":id", -- Socrata column ID
"attribution", -- The attribution of the asset, if one has been provided
"page_views_total", -- Number of views of this asset since creation.
"automation_method_other", -- Free text field that allows for descriptions of automation if the dropdown in automation_method is not correct.
"type", -- The type of the asset (eg. dataset, story, filter, href, file).
"description", -- The description for the asset, if one has been provided.
"is_public", -- Single true or false column on whether the dataset is publicly available to use and view.
"update_frequency", -- Timeframe this dataset is expected to be updated at.
"program_name", -- Free text field that describes the program name of the dataset (if applicable).
"dataset_url", -- Link to the asset's webpage
"page_views_last_week", -- Number of views of this asset last week.
"name", -- The title of the asset.
"cover_image_url", -- The URL link of the cover image if applicable.
"id", -- The unique identifier for the asset.
"page_views_last_month", -- Number of views of this asset last month.
"owner_display_name", -- The display name of the dataset owner's account.
"publication_date", -- Date this asset was published.
"tags", -- Multi-select field of the tags of this dataset (if applicable)
"data_updated_at", -- The timestamp at which the asset data was last updated.
"updatedat", -- The timestamp at which the asset was last updated.
"strategic_area", -- Single choice field that is optional to pick what strategic outcome this dataset can represent.
"department_name", -- Name of the dataset's owning department.
"metadata_updated_at", -- The timestamp at which the asset metadata was last updated.
"automation_method", -- Dropdown selection describing how the dataset is automated (if applicable)
"createdat", -- The timestamp at which the asset was created.
"row_count", -- Number of rows this dataset has (only for dataset type).
"download_count", -- The number of times this asset has been downloaded.
"spatial_information" -- Free text field that describes if there is geospatial information with this dataset.
FROM
"datahub-austintexas-gov/open-data-portal-datasets-austin-transportation-28ys-ieqv:latest"."open_data_portal_datasets_austin_transportation"
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 datahub-austintexas-gov/open-data-portal-datasets-austin-transportation-28ys-ieqv 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 datahub-austintexas-gov/open-data-portal-datasets-austin-transportation-28ys-ieqv: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 datahub-austintexas-gov/open-data-portal-datasets-austin-transportation-28ys-ieqvCheckout 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 datahub-austintexas-gov/open-data-portal-datasets-austin-transportation-28ys-ieqv:latestThis will download all the objects for the latest tag of datahub-austintexas-gov/open-data-portal-datasets-austin-transportation-28ys-ieqv 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 datahub-austintexas-gov/open-data-portal-datasets-austin-transportation-28ys-ieqv: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 datahub-austintexas-gov/open-data-portal-datasets-austin-transportation-28ys-ieqv: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, datahub-austintexas-gov/open-data-portal-datasets-austin-transportation-28ys-ieqv is just another Postgres schema.