Query the Data Delivery Network

The 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 cacfp_nov_2018_site_map_dataset_20182019 table in this repository, by referencing it like:

"texas-gov/cacfp-nov-2018-site-map-dataset-20182019-d92h-g6h7:latest"."cacfp_nov_2018_site_map_dataset_20182019"

or in a full query, like:

SELECT
    ":id", -- Socrata column ID
    "outsideschoolhours", -- Site operates as an outside school hours center. Data displayed as: Y/N for CACFP Centers or N/A for CACFP Day Care Homes
    "childcarecenter", -- Site operates as a child care center (CCC). Data displayed as: Y/N for CACFP Centers or N/A for CACFP Day Care Homes
    "adultcarecenter", -- Site operates as an adult day care (ADC) center. Data displayed as: Y/N for CACFP Centers or N/A for CACFP Day Care Homes
    "sitestreetaddressline1", -- Site street address, line 1
    "sitename", -- Site name
    "cename", -- Contracting Entity (CE) name
    "ceid", -- Unique number assigned to Contracting Entity (CE) to identify organization as a program sponsor
    "sitestreetaddresscity", -- Site street address, city
    "meals_claimed_in_nov_2018", -- Total number of Breakfast, Snack, Lunch, and Supper meals claimed for reimbursement for November 2018
    "siteid", -- Identification number assigned to site within Contracting Entity (CE)
    "at_riskonly", -- Site operates as an At-Risk center only. Data displayed as: Y/N for CACFP Centers or N/A for CACFP Day Care Homes
    "emergencyshelter", -- Site operates as an emergency shelter. Data displayed as: Y/N for CACFP Centers or N/A for CACFP Day Care Homes
    "geocoded_column", -- Geolocation data based on site address.
    "totalparticipantsenrolled", -- Total number of participants enrolled at site at start of program year
    "sitestreetaddresszipcode", -- Site street address, zip code
    "sitestreetaddressline2", -- Site street address, line 2 (if applicable)
    "sitestreetaddressstate", -- Site street address, state
    "claim_date", -- Month and year of being reported for reimbursement of meals served
    "at_riskafterschoolcarecenter", -- Site operates as an At-Risk afterschool care center (At-Risk). Data displayed as: Y/N for CACFP Centers or N/A for CACFP Day Care Homes
    "headstart", -- Site operates as a Head Start center. Data displayed as: Y/N for CACFP Centers or N/A for CACFP Day Care Homes
    "program", -- Type of CACFP sub-program the site participates in
    ":@computed_region_fd5q_j34z",
    ":@computed_region_ywmh_rrwq",
    ":@computed_region_hy99_5a2i",
    ":@computed_region_346f_s9gh",
    ":@computed_region_9y59_55ru"
FROM
    "texas-gov/cacfp-nov-2018-site-map-dataset-20182019-d92h-g6h7:latest"."cacfp_nov_2018_site_map_dataset_20182019"
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 texas-gov/cacfp-nov-2018-site-map-dataset-20182019-d92h-g6h7 with SQL in under 60 seconds.

This repository is an "external" repository. That means it's hosted elsewhere, in this case at data.texas.gov. When you querytexas-gov/cacfp-nov-2018-site-map-dataset-20182019-d92h-g6h7:latest on the DDN, we "mount" the repository using the socrata mount handler. The mount handler proxies your SQL query to the upstream data source, translating it from SQL to the relevant language (in this case SoQL).

We also cache query responses on the DDN, but we run the DDN on multiple nodes so a CACHE_HIT is only guaranteed for subsequent queries that land on the same node.

Query Your Local Engine

bash -c "$(curl -sL https://github.com/splitgraph/splitgraph/releases/latest/download/install.sh)"

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 (like this repository), 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, where the author has pushed Splitgraph Images to the repository, you can "clone" and/or "checkout" the data using sgr cloneand sgr checkout.

Mounting Data

This repository is an external repository. It's not hosted by Splitgraph. It is hosted by data.texas.gov, and Splitgraph indexes it. This means it is not an actual Splitgraph image, so you cannot use sgr clone to get the data. Instead, you can use the socrata adapter with the sgr mount command. Then, if you want, you can import the data and turn it into a Splitgraph image that others can clone.

First, install Splitgraph if you haven't already.

Mount the table with sgr mount

sgr mount socrata \
  "texas-gov/cacfp-nov-2018-site-map-dataset-20182019-d92h-g6h7" \
  --handler-options '{
    "domain": "data.texas.gov",
    "tables": {
        "cacfp_nov_2018_site_map_dataset_20182019": "d92h-g6h7"
    }
}'

That's it! Now you can query the data in the mounted table like any other Postgres table.

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, texas-gov/cacfp-nov-2018-site-map-dataset-20182019-d92h-g6h7 is just another Postgres schema.