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 sonoma_county_rebuilding_permits table in this repository, by referencing it like:
"sonomacounty-ca-gov/sonoma-county-rebuilding-permits-652y-5ihx:latest"."sonoma_county_rebuilding_permits"or in a full query, like:
SELECT
":id", -- Socrata column ID
"first_inspection_date", -- Date of first inspection.
"situs_address",
"permit_description", -- The description of the permit or record. Bridge: A structure spanning and providing passage over a river, chasm, road, or other obstacle. Guest House: A detached accessory building of a permanent type of construction which includes living area with no provisions for appliances or fixtures for the storage and/or preparation of food. Mobile Home (HUD Inspected): A movable structure made of one or more sections, designed and set up as a as the primary residence on the property and usable with or without a foundation. Mobile Home 2nd Unit: A movable structure made of one or more sections, designed and set up as the second unit on the property and usable with or without a foundation. Pool House: A secondary building with an open floor plan located on a property with a pool. Second Unit: A small permanent home established in addition to the main dwelling on a parcel zoned for residential use. SFD – Replacement (Requires Demo): A single family dwelling unit built to replace one destroyed in the fire.
"permit_status", -- The status of the permit or record. Started: Application has been received by Permit Sonoma and entered into permit database. Approved for Plan Check: Application has been determined to be complete and ready for a Building Plans Examiner to review. Plan Check Approved: Building Plans Examiner has reviewed and approved the application. Pre-Issue: Application is approved and Permit Technician has assessed permit fees and invoiced the customer. Issued: Customer has paid permit fees and inspections can be scheduled. Finaled: All required inspections have been satisfactorily completed.
"record_id", -- The unique identifier for each permit or record.
"status",
"area_id", -- Area of permit or record. MWS = Mark West Springs RIN = Rincon Valley KEN = Kenwood SON = Sonoma GLE = Glen Ellen SR = Santa Rosa (within city) SRO = Santa Rosa BEN = Bennett Valley
"parcel_number", -- The parcel number.
"date_opened", -- The date the permit or record was opened.
"geocoded_column_state",
"geocoded_column_city",
"geocoded_column_address",
"geocoded_column",
"event_title", -- Name of the Storm or Disaster Event.
"units", -- The number of units related to the permit or record.
"category", -- The category of the permit or record derived from the Permit Description column. Single Family Home: SFD Replacement or Mobile Home. The primary dwelling unit on a property. Accessory Dwelling Unit: Second Unit and Mobile Home 2nd Unit. A dwelling unit that is accessory to the primary dwelling unit. Bridge
"record_type", -- The type of permit or record.
"total_square_feet", -- The total square feet related to the permit or record.
"buildings", -- The number of buildings related to the permit or record.
"geocoded_column_zip",
":@computed_region_dig5_f3vy",
":@computed_region_xw9s_pz78",
"supervisors_district" -- The Supervisors District and associated Supervisors name.
FROM
"sonomacounty-ca-gov/sonoma-county-rebuilding-permits-652y-5ihx:latest"."sonoma_county_rebuilding_permits"
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 sonomacounty-ca-gov/sonoma-county-rebuilding-permits-652y-5ihx 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 sonomacounty-ca-gov/sonoma-county-rebuilding-permits-652y-5ihx: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 sonomacounty-ca-gov/sonoma-county-rebuilding-permits-652y-5ihxCheckout 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 sonomacounty-ca-gov/sonoma-county-rebuilding-permits-652y-5ihx:latestThis will download all the objects for the latest tag of sonomacounty-ca-gov/sonoma-county-rebuilding-permits-652y-5ihx 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 sonomacounty-ca-gov/sonoma-county-rebuilding-permits-652y-5ihx: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 sonomacounty-ca-gov/sonoma-county-rebuilding-permits-652y-5ihx: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, sonomacounty-ca-gov/sonoma-county-rebuilding-permits-652y-5ihx is just another Postgres schema.