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 department_of_state_business_filings_beginning table in this repository, by referencing it like:
"ny-gov/department-of-state-business-filings-beginning-m7i3-tv6j:latest"."department_of_state_business_filings_beginning"or in a full query, like:
SELECT
":id", -- Socrata column ID
"description", -- The full name/description for the type of certificate filed.
"year", -- The four digit year in which the certificate type was filed.
"jan", -- The number of certificates of the specified type that were filed in January of the year specified. This will be blank until data for the month becomes available.
"total", -- The total number of certificates of the specified type that were filed in the year specified. This will include a year-to-date total for incomplete years.
"feb", -- The number of certificates of the specified type that were filed in February of the year specified. This will be blank until data for the month becomes available.
"may", -- The number of certificates of the specified type that were filed in May of the year specified. This will be blank until data for the month becomes available.
"jun", -- The number of certificates of the specified type that were filed in June of the year specified. This will be blank until data for the month becomes available.
"sep", -- The number of certificates of the specified type that were filed in September of the year specified. This will be blank until data for the month becomes available.
"oct", -- The number of certificates of the specified type that were filed in October of the year specified. This will be blank until data for the month becomes available.
"nov", -- The number of certificates of the specified type that were filed in November of the year specified. This will be blank until data for the month becomes available.
"dec", -- The number of certificates of the specified type that were filed in December of the year specified. This will be blank until data for the month becomes available.
"fictitious_name_type_description", -- The name of the name type associated with the name type code. Values: Actual Name, Fictitious.
"cert_code", -- The 2 character certificate type code specified for the certificate filed (first two characters; CCxxx x). A full list of the certificate type codes appears at the end of this document.
"fict_name", -- The 1 character name type code specified for the certificate filed (sixth character; xxxx N). Values: A, F.
"mod_cert_code", -- The full 6 character certificate code for specified for the certificate filed. This code is composed of the certificate type, authorization type, business type, and name type codes. The fifth character is a placeholder and is currently blank.
"aug", -- The number of certificates of the specified type that were filed in August of the year specified. This will be blank until data for the month becomes available.
"jul", -- The number of certificates of the specified type that were filed in July of the year specified. This will be blank until data for the month becomes available.
"apr", -- The number of certificates of the specified type that were filed in April of the year specified. This will be blank until data for the month becomes available.
"mar", -- The number of certificates of the specified type that were filed in March of the year specified. This will be blank until data for the month becomes available.
"authority_type_description", -- The name of the authorization type associated with the authorization type code. Values: Domestic, Foreign, Unauthorized.
"auth_type", -- The 1 character authorization type code specified for the certificate filed (third character; xxAx x). Values: D, F, U.
"certificate_code_description", -- The name of the certificate type associated with the certificate type code. A full list of the certificate type descriptions appears at the end of this document.
"bus_type", -- The 1 character business entity type specified for the certificate filed (fourth character; xxxB x). Values: A, B, C, L, N, P, R, S.
"business_type_description" -- The name of the business type associated with the business type code. Values: Limited Liability Company; Business Corporation; Cooperative Corporation; Limited Partnership; Not-for-profit Corporation; Registered Limited Liability Partnership; Religious Corporation; Professional Limited Liability Company.
FROM
"ny-gov/department-of-state-business-filings-beginning-m7i3-tv6j:latest"."department_of_state_business_filings_beginning"
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 ny-gov/department-of-state-business-filings-beginning-m7i3-tv6j 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 ny-gov/department-of-state-business-filings-beginning-m7i3-tv6j: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 ny-gov/department-of-state-business-filings-beginning-m7i3-tv6jCheckout 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 ny-gov/department-of-state-business-filings-beginning-m7i3-tv6j:latestThis will download all the objects for the latest tag of ny-gov/department-of-state-business-filings-beginning-m7i3-tv6j 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 ny-gov/department-of-state-business-filings-beginning-m7i3-tv6j: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 ny-gov/department-of-state-business-filings-beginning-m7i3-tv6j: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, ny-gov/department-of-state-business-filings-beginning-m7i3-tv6j is just another Postgres schema.