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 dmv_driver_sanctions_four_year_window table in this repository, by referencing it like:
"ny-gov/dmv-driver-sanctions-four-year-window-qwti-3ybe:latest"."dmv_driver_sanctions_four_year_window"or in a full query, like:
SELECT
":id", -- Socrata column ID
"clearance_date", -- The date when the sanction was resolved. Clearance Date is null when the sanction is pending or in effect. Sanctions resolved longer than four years in the past are no longer public records, and will not be listed.
"clearance_reason", -- NYS DMV’s standard description of how the sanction was resolved. Clearance Reason is null when the sanction is pending or in effect.
"court", -- The name of the Court that ordered the sanction. Court will be null when court names from old records are not available. Court will be null when sanctions result from administrative action.
"sanction_reason", -- NYS DMV’s standard description of the reason for the sanction. Sanction Reason is never null.
"pseudonym", -- An individual may accrue one or many sanctions. Pseudonym is an anonymous placeholder for the individual’s NYS DMV Client Identification Number (CID). It distinguishes individual persons in the data set without revealing the underlying CID. It is never null. Note that DMV recalculates Pseudonym every few months. It will be unproductive to attempt matching pseudonyms across data sets generated at widely different times.
"effective_date", -- The date when the sanction goes into effect. Effective Date is never null. Apart from minor exceptions, sanctions remain public records from their effective dates until four years after resolution.
"sanction" -- SUSPENSION means the privilege to drive is taken away and may be returned. REVOCATION means the privilege to drive is taken and its return is at the discretion of NYS DMV. CANCELLATION is similar to revocation, but is usually at the driver’s initiative. The suffix “PENDING” means that a sanction order has been issued with a future effective date. Many pending sanctions are resolved before their effective dates and do not go into effect. Sanction is never null. See https://dmv.ny.gov/tickets/suspensions-and-revocations for details.
FROM
"ny-gov/dmv-driver-sanctions-four-year-window-qwti-3ybe:latest"."dmv_driver_sanctions_four_year_window"
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/dmv-driver-sanctions-four-year-window-qwti-3ybe 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/dmv-driver-sanctions-four-year-window-qwti-3ybe: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/dmv-driver-sanctions-four-year-window-qwti-3ybeCheckout 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/dmv-driver-sanctions-four-year-window-qwti-3ybe:latestThis will download all the objects for the latest tag of ny-gov/dmv-driver-sanctions-four-year-window-qwti-3ybe 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/dmv-driver-sanctions-four-year-window-qwti-3ybe: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/dmv-driver-sanctions-four-year-window-qwti-3ybe: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/dmv-driver-sanctions-four-year-window-qwti-3ybe is just another Postgres schema.