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 tobacco_products_tax_licenses_current_daily_county table in this repository, by referencing it like:
"pa-gov/tobacco-products-tax-licenses-current-daily-county-ut72-sft8:latest"."tobacco_products_tax_licenses_current_daily_county"or in a full query, like:
SELECT
":id", -- Socrata column ID
":@computed_region_nmsq_hqvv",
":@computed_region_d3gw_znnf",
":@computed_region_rayf_jjgk",
":@computed_region_r6rf_p9et",
"license_type", -- License type that was requested on the application. Other tobacco products includes the following: E-cigarettes, liquids or any other substance that goes into e-cigarettes, roll-your-own tobacco, pipe tobacco (periques, granulated, plug cut, crimp cut, ready rubbed, and other smoking tobacco), and chewing tobacco (snuff, dry snuff, snuff flour, Cavendish, plug and twist tobacco, and fine cut). Cigarette Stamping Agent license authorizes them to put stamps on packs of cigarettes for sale in PA. They are not authorized to sell to consumers unless they also have a retail license. Cig/OTP retail license authorizes them to sell cigarettes and/or other tobacco products to consumers Wholesale licenses authorize them to purchase stamped cigarettes and sell to retailers Vending authorizes the cigarettes to be sold at a vending machine. Licenses can be combined, such as Wholesale/Vending which would authorize them to purchase stamped cigarettes from an CSA and sell them at a vending machine. More information available on Department of Revenue website: Cigarette licenses: https://www.revenue.pa.gov/TaxTypes/CigaretteTax/ForLicensees/Pages/default.aspx# Other tobacco products (OTP): https://www.revenue.pa.gov/TaxTypes/OTPT/Pages/default.aspx Prior detailed answers are available here: https://revenue-pa.custhelp.com/app/answers/list/search/1/kw/tobacco%20license
":@computed_region_amqz_jbr4",
"location_1", -- Address of the location where the license will be used as provided on the application including the latitude and longitude as created during import of the data.
"location_1_city",
"expiration_date", -- Expiration date of the license or certificate. Licenses must be renewed every year, expiring at the end of February.
"account", -- Account number used to track the tobacco products license provided by the Department of Revenue (DOR). Account numbers are eight (8) digits in length. Generally the first two digits of the license number are the county code.
"trade_name", -- Trade Name of the location where the license will be used as provided on the application
"country", -- Country of the location where the license will be used as provided on the application
"location_1_zip",
"location_1_address",
"legal_name", -- Legal Name of the entity or individual registering as provided on the application
"county", -- County of the location where the license/certificate will be used as provided on the application. PA has 67 counties.
"location_1_state",
"postal_code" -- Postal Code of the location where the license will be used as provided on the application
FROM
"pa-gov/tobacco-products-tax-licenses-current-daily-county-ut72-sft8:latest"."tobacco_products_tax_licenses_current_daily_county"
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 pa-gov/tobacco-products-tax-licenses-current-daily-county-ut72-sft8 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 pa-gov/tobacco-products-tax-licenses-current-daily-county-ut72-sft8: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 pa-gov/tobacco-products-tax-licenses-current-daily-county-ut72-sft8Checkout 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 pa-gov/tobacco-products-tax-licenses-current-daily-county-ut72-sft8:latestThis will download all the objects for the latest tag of pa-gov/tobacco-products-tax-licenses-current-daily-county-ut72-sft8 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 pa-gov/tobacco-products-tax-licenses-current-daily-county-ut72-sft8: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 pa-gov/tobacco-products-tax-licenses-current-daily-county-ut72-sft8: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, pa-gov/tobacco-products-tax-licenses-current-daily-county-ut72-sft8 is just another Postgres schema.