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 summer_meal_programs_seamless_summer_option_sso table in this repository, by referencing it like:

"texas-gov/summer-meal-programs-seamless-summer-option-sso-rbdj-agw7:latest"."summer_meal_programs_seamless_summer_option_sso"

or in a full query, like:

SELECT
    ":id", -- Socrata column ID
    "lunchreimbursement", -- Total lunch reimbursement for claim month
    "pmsnackmealsreimbursed", -- Total number of afternoon snacks claimed by sites sponsored by Contracting Entity (CE) for claim month
    "typeofagency", -- Type of agency the Contracting Entity (CE) operates as. Data displayed as: Educational Institution/For Profit Organization/Government Agency/Indian Tribe/Military Installation/Private Non Profit Organization/Other
    "supperreimbursement", -- Total supper reimbursement for claim month
    "pmsnackreimbursement", -- Total afternoon snack reimbursement for claim month
    "sitecount", -- Number of sites sponsored by the Contracting Entity (CE) for the Seamless Summer Option (SSO) summer feeding program
    "cecounty", -- County in which the Contracting Entity (CE) is located
    "cename", -- Contracting Entity (CE) name
    "ceid", -- Unique number assigned by TDA to Contracting Entity (CE) to identify organization as program sponsor
    "breakfastmealsreimbursed", -- Total number of breakfasts claimed by sites sponsored by Contracting Entity (CE) for claim month
    "programyear", -- A program period for summer meal programs (SFSP and SSO) is defined as mid-May through the end of August for the same calendar year.
    "amsnackmealsreimbursed", -- Total number of morning snacks claimed by sites sponsored by Contracting Entity (CE) for claim month
    "amsnackreimbursement", -- Total morning snack reimbursement for claim month
    "countydistrictcode", -- County District Code for county in which Contracting Entity (CE) in located
    "totalreimbursement", -- Total federal meal reimbursement for site for claim month
    "lunchmealsreimbursed", -- Total number of lunches claimed by sites sponsored by Contracting Entity (CE) for claim month
    "esc", -- Educational Service Center (ESC) region
    "claimdate", -- Month and year being reported for reimbursement of meals served
    "suppermealsreimbursed", -- Total number of suppers claimed by sites sponsored by Contracting Entity (CE) for claim month
    "breakfastreimbursement", -- Total breakfast reimbursement for claim month
    "reporttype", -- Type of information being reported in the dataset
    "typeoforg", -- Type of organization the Contracting Entity (CE) operates as within a specific nutrition program. Data for SSO displayed as: Charter/Private/Public/RCCI (Residential Child Care Institution). 
    "tdaregion" -- Texas Department of Agriculture (TDA) service region
FROM
    "texas-gov/summer-meal-programs-seamless-summer-option-sso-rbdj-agw7:latest"."summer_meal_programs_seamless_summer_option_sso"
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/summer-meal-programs-seamless-summer-option-sso-rbdj-agw7 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/summer-meal-programs-seamless-summer-option-sso-rbdj-agw7: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/summer-meal-programs-seamless-summer-option-sso-rbdj-agw7" \
  --handler-options '{
    "domain": "data.texas.gov",
    "tables": {
        "summer_meal_programs_seamless_summer_option_sso": "rbdj-agw7"
    }
}'

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/summer-meal-programs-seamless-summer-option-sso-rbdj-agw7 is just another Postgres schema.