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 iowa_unemployment_insurance_initial_claims_by table in this repository, by referencing it like:
"mydata-iowa-gov/iowa-unemployment-insurance-initial-claims-by-rigx-2vau:latest"."iowa_unemployment_insurance_initial_claims_by"or in a full query, like:
SELECT
":id", -- Socrata column ID
"gnis_feature_id", -- Permanent, unique feature record identifier for Named Physical and Cultural Geographic Features (Except Roads and Highways) of the United States, Its Territories, Outlying Areas, and Freely Associated Areas, and the Waters of the Same to the Limit of the Twelve-Mile Statutory Zone (INCITS 446-2008).
"initial_claims", -- Initial claims include new claims and additional claims. A new claim is any notice of unemployment filed to request a determination of entitlement to and eligibility for compensation. An additional claim is a notice of unemployment filed to begin a second or subsequent period of eligibility within a benefit year or period of eligibility.
"sort_code", -- Sorts data by descending date and ascending county name
"primary_lat_dec", -- Primary latitude in decimal degrees for the county as provided by U.S. Geological Survey, 19810501, U.S. Geographic Names Information System (GNIS): U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, VA.
"county_name", -- County data is based on the claimant’s place of residence.
"month_ending", -- Stored as month ending date. Displayed as month.
"primary_long_dec", -- Primary longitude in decimal degrees for the county as provided by U.S. Geological Survey, 19810501, U.S. Geographic Names Information System (GNIS): U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, VA.
"primary_county_coordinates", -- Primary latitude and longitude in decimal degrees that create the primary point for the county as provided by U.S. Geological Survey, 19810501, U.S. Geographic Names Information System (GNIS): U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, VA. The primary point is generally at or near the geographic center of the county.
"county_fip", -- A federal processing information series five-digit code for the identification of counties and county equivalents of the United States and its insular and associated areas, for the purpose of information interchange among data processing systems. (INCITS 31-2009).
":@computed_region_e7ym_nrbf"
FROM
"mydata-iowa-gov/iowa-unemployment-insurance-initial-claims-by-rigx-2vau:latest"."iowa_unemployment_insurance_initial_claims_by"
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 mydata-iowa-gov/iowa-unemployment-insurance-initial-claims-by-rigx-2vau 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 mydata-iowa-gov/iowa-unemployment-insurance-initial-claims-by-rigx-2vau: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 mydata-iowa-gov/iowa-unemployment-insurance-initial-claims-by-rigx-2vauCheckout 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 mydata-iowa-gov/iowa-unemployment-insurance-initial-claims-by-rigx-2vau:latestThis will download all the objects for the latest tag of mydata-iowa-gov/iowa-unemployment-insurance-initial-claims-by-rigx-2vau 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 mydata-iowa-gov/iowa-unemployment-insurance-initial-claims-by-rigx-2vau: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 mydata-iowa-gov/iowa-unemployment-insurance-initial-claims-by-rigx-2vau: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, mydata-iowa-gov/iowa-unemployment-insurance-initial-claims-by-rigx-2vau is just another Postgres schema.