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 norfolk_swam_certified_businesses table in this repository, by referencing it like:
"norfolk-gov/norfolk-swam-certified-businesses-393b-ph9i:latest"."norfolk_swam_certified_businesses"or in a full query, like:
SELECT
":id", -- Socrata column ID
"service_disabled_veteran", -- The date on which the business was officially designated as Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned.
"federal_service_disabled", -- The date on which the business was officially designated as a Federal Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business.
"economically_disadvantaged", -- The date on which the business was designated as an Economically Disadvantaged Women-Owned Small Business.
"wosb_start_date", -- The date on which the business was officially recognized as a Women-Owned Small Business (WOSB).
"dbe_start_date", -- The date on which the business was certified as a Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE).
"dbe_acdbe_certifying_agency", -- The agency responsible for granting the SWaM certification to the business.
"business_category", -- The occupational or economic sector that the business operates within.
"certification_expiration_date", -- The date on which the business’s SWaM Certification is set to expire, requiring renewal or re-certification.
"dba", -- The “Doing Business As” trade name or assumed name under which the business operates if it is different from the official company name.
"company_name", -- The official name of the business as registered with state or federal authorities.
"business_name", -- The name used by the business in daily operations or marketing, which may differ from the official company name.
"nigp_code_and_description", -- The code and description used to classify and identify products and services procured by state and local governments according to the National Institute of Governmental Purchasing (NIGP).
"certification_number", -- A unique identifier provided to each business for tracking its certification status.
"naics_code_and_description", -- The code used to classify the primary business activity of the company according to the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS).
"eso_start_date", -- The date on which the business received its Employment Service Organization (ESO) designation.
"city", -- The city in which the business is located.
"acdbe_start_date", -- The date on which the business received its Airport Concessions Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (ACDBE) designation.
"_8_a_start_date", -- The date on which the business was certified under the 8(a) Business Development Program.
"certification_type", -- A list of all state and federal designations the business falls under (e.g., Small, Women Owned, Minority Owned, etc.). For more information about the types of designations a business can receive, please see this website: https://sbsd.virginia.gov/certification-division/swam/.
"state", -- The state in which the business is located.
"business_website", -- The URL of the business’s official website, if available.
"mailing_address", -- The address where the business receives postal communications.
"zip_code", -- The postal ZIP code for the business’s location.
"ethnicity", -- The ethnicity of the business owner, if provided.
"fed_type", -- The type of Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) classification that the business holds, indicating eligibility for federal contracting programs.
"small_start_date", -- The date on which the business was officially designated as a Small Business.
"micro_start_date", -- The date on which the business was officially designated as a Micro Business.
"women_owned_start_date", -- The date on which the business was officially designated as Women-Owned.
"minority_owned_start_date" -- The date on which the business received its Minority-Owned designation.
FROM
"norfolk-gov/norfolk-swam-certified-businesses-393b-ph9i:latest"."norfolk_swam_certified_businesses"
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 norfolk-gov/norfolk-swam-certified-businesses-393b-ph9i 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 norfolk-gov/norfolk-swam-certified-businesses-393b-ph9i: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 norfolk-gov/norfolk-swam-certified-businesses-393b-ph9iCheckout 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 norfolk-gov/norfolk-swam-certified-businesses-393b-ph9i:latestThis will download all the objects for the latest tag of norfolk-gov/norfolk-swam-certified-businesses-393b-ph9i 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 norfolk-gov/norfolk-swam-certified-businesses-393b-ph9i: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 norfolk-gov/norfolk-swam-certified-businesses-393b-ph9i: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, norfolk-gov/norfolk-swam-certified-businesses-393b-ph9i is just another Postgres schema.