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 tickets_issued_by_decs_division_of_forest table in this repository, by referencing it like:
"ny-gov/tickets-issued-by-decs-division-of-forest-h2cu-nt33:latest"."tickets_issued_by_decs_division_of_forest"or in a full query, like:
SELECT
":id", -- Socrata column ID
"offenses_related_to_state", -- The number of tickets written for violations related to state land use
"offenses_related_to_fire", -- The number of tickets written for violations related to forest fire control
"offenses_related_to_fish", -- The number of tickets written for violations related to protection of fish and wildlife
"offenses_of_high_peaks_rules", -- The number of tickets written for violations related to protection of the Adirondack High Peaks Wilderness Area
"offenses_related_to_atv", -- The number of tickets written for violations related to All-Terrain Vehicles
"offenses_related_to_motor", -- The number of tickets for violations related to motor vehicle operation on state land other than All-Terrain Vehicles
"offenses_related_to_dec", -- The number of tickets for violations related to DEC campgrounds
"offenses_related_to_air", -- The number of tickets for violations related to air pollution
"offenses_related_to_under", -- The number of tickets for violations related to under-age drinking on DEC state land
"offenses_related_to_other", -- The number of tickets for violations related to other ECL or R&R such as solid wastes, forest insect and disease control, and protection of other lands.
"offenses_related_to_other_1", -- The number of tickets written for other violations such as Navigation Law, Tax Law, Agricultural & Markets Law, Transportation Law, and the remaining NYS Consolidated Laws.
"offenses_related_to_snowmobile", -- The number of tickets written for violations related to Parks and Recreation snowmobile laws.
"ecat", -- The number of tickets issued for violations of the Environmental Conservation Law and/or violations of 6NYCRR (Title 6 NY Codes, Rules & Regulations). These violations of law consist of a violation, misdemeanor, or felony offense and are adjudicated in criminal court.
"dec_region", -- NYS is divided into 9 geographical regions NYS DEC’s Regions • Region 1: (Long Island) Nassau and Suffolk counties; • Region 2: (New York City) Brooklyn, Bronx, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island; • Region 3: (Lower Hudson Valley) Dutchess, Orange, Putnam, Rockland, Sullivan, Ulster and Westchester counties; • Region 4: (Capital Region/Northern Catskills) Albany, Columbia, Delaware, Greene, Montgomery, Otsego, Rensselaer, Schenectady and Schoharie counties; • Region 5: (Eastern Adirondacks/Lake Champlain) Clinton, Essex, Franklin, Fulton, Hamilton, Saratoga, Warren and Washington counties; • Region 6: (Western Adirondacks/Eastern Lake Ontario) Herkimer, Jefferson, Lewis, Oneida and St. Lawrence counties; • Region 7: (Central New York) Broome, Cayuga, Chenango, Cortland, Madison, Onondaga, Oswego, Tioga and Tompkins counties; • Region 8: (Western Finger Lakes) Chemung, Genesee, Livingston, Monroe, Ontario, Orleans, Schuyler, Seneca, Steuben, Wayne and Yates counties; • Region 9: (Western New York) Allegany, Chautauqua, Cattaraugus, Erie, Niagara and Wyoming counties. A map of NYSDEC regions can be found on NYSDEC’s website at http://www.dec.ny.gov/about/50230.html
"zone", -- DEC’s 9 geographical regions are further divided into 17 Zones within the Division of Forest Protection. Region 1 Zone 1&2A: All Counties Regions 1&2; Region 3 Zone A: Ulster and Sullivan (Towns of Neversink and Rockland) Counties; Region 3 Zone B: Sullivan (All towns except Neversink and Rockland), Orange, Putnam and Dutchess Counties; Region 4 Zone A: Albany, Columbia, Greene, and Rensselaer Counties; Region 4 Zone B: Delaware, Montgomery, Otsego and Schoharie Counties; Region 5 Zone A: Clinton (Towns of Clinton, Dannemora and Ellenburg), Franklin (All towns except Harrietstown within the High Peaks Wilderness Area), Essex (Town of St. Armand outside of McKenzie Mtn. Wilderness Area), and Hamilton Counties (Towns of Long Lake and Arietta north of Tioga Point Campground east to Town of Indian Lake ; Region 5 Zone B: Clinton (all Towns except Clinton, Dannemora and Ellenburg), and Essex County (Towns of Chesterfield, Elizabethtown, Essex, Jay, Lewis, Moriah, Westport, Willsboro, Minerva (west of the Hudson River), Newcomb and North Hudson; Region 5 Zone C: Essex (Towns of St. Armand within the McKenzie Mtn. Wilderness Area, Keene, North Elba, and Wilmington and Franklin (Town of Harrietstown within the High Peaks Wilderness Area) Counties; Region 5 Zone D: Hamilton County (Towns of Arietta, Benson, Hope, Indian Lake, Inlet, Lake Pleasant, Long Lake south of north point road, Morehouse, and Wells) and Fulton Counties; Region5 Zone E: Essex (Towns of Crown Point, Minerva east of the Hudson River, North Hudson, Schroon, Ticonderoga), and Warren Counties; Region 5 Zone F: Saratoga and Washington Counties; Region 6 Zone A: St. Lawrence County; Region 6 Zone B: Jefferson, Lewis and Herkimer (Town of Webb north) Counties; Region 6 Zone C: Herkimer (All towns except Town of Webb north) and Oneida Counties; Region 7 Zone A: All Counties Region 7; Zone 8A: All Counties Region 8; and Region 9A: All Counties Region 9.
"year", -- Year in which the action was taken.
"nys_vehicle_traffic_offenses", -- The number of tickets written for Vehicle and Traffic Law (V&Ts) violations and other associated rules and regulations. The number of tickets issued for violation of the Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation Law and the Navigation Law
"parks_recreation_law", -- The number of tickets issued for violation of the Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation Law and the Navigation Law
"arrests_turned_over_to_another", -- The number of cases turned over to another police agency
"other_appearance_tickets" -- The number of tickets written for other violations such as Tax Law, Agricultural & Markets Law, Transportation Law, and the remaining NYS Consolidated Laws.
FROM
"ny-gov/tickets-issued-by-decs-division-of-forest-h2cu-nt33:latest"."tickets_issued_by_decs_division_of_forest"
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/tickets-issued-by-decs-division-of-forest-h2cu-nt33 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/tickets-issued-by-decs-division-of-forest-h2cu-nt33: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/tickets-issued-by-decs-division-of-forest-h2cu-nt33Checkout 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/tickets-issued-by-decs-division-of-forest-h2cu-nt33:latestThis will download all the objects for the latest tag of ny-gov/tickets-issued-by-decs-division-of-forest-h2cu-nt33 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/tickets-issued-by-decs-division-of-forest-h2cu-nt33: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/tickets-issued-by-decs-division-of-forest-h2cu-nt33: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/tickets-issued-by-decs-division-of-forest-h2cu-nt33 is just another Postgres schema.