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 financial_affairs_disclosures table in this repository, by referencing it like:
"wa-gov/financial-affairs-disclosures-ehbc-shxw:latest"."financial_affairs_disclosures"or in a full query, like:
SELECT
":id", -- Socrata column ID
"submission_id", -- Internal PDC identifier used for tracking a unique revision (submission) of a financial affairs disclosure. When a financial affairs disclosure is amended, the amendment receives a new id.
"name", -- The name of the person for whom the financial affairs disclosure was filed.
"report_number", -- The legacy report number for financial affairs disclosures due prior to January 1, 2020.
"filer_id", -- Legacy unique id assigned to a candidate. The filer id is consistent across election years with the exception that an individual running for a second office in the same election year will receive a second filer id. There is no correlation between the two. For non-candidate submissions, this value can be used to correlate legacy records with newer records bit the person_id should be preferred because it is consistent even for filers running for multiple offices in the same year.
"candidacies", -- A machine consumable representation of the candidacies that the filer declared during the period of this financial affairs disclosure statement.
"id", -- Unique identifier for a financial affairs disclosure for a person, for a single reporting period. When a financial affairs disclosure is amended, the id will stay the same.
"person_id", -- The unique ID assigned to a public office holder or candidate. This id is consistent across years and, offices or candidacies and is the preferred id for grouping submissions by person.
"offices", -- A machine consumable representation of the offices that the filer held during the period of this financial affairs disclosure statement.
"period_end", -- The ending date of the reporting period for the financial disclosure.
"json", -- A machine consumable representation of the data submitted to file the financial affairs disclosure. For any records covering reporting period prior to 2019, this field will be empty. This field may also be empty when the statement has been redacted. This may happen when the commission has granted a retroactive reporting modification.
"period_start", -- The starting date of the reporting period for the financial disclosure.
"url", -- A link to view the financial affairs disclosure or a link providing information on how to request the record when it is not available online. Generally, any financial affairs disclosures due prior to January 1, 2020 are not available online.
"certification", -- The statement that was certified at the time of submittal. Records that were submitted prior to January, 2020 do not have this value
"history", -- This column include a history of all reports related to a financial affairs disclosure submission and subsequent amendments.
"certification_email", -- The email address of the person that certified the submission of the financial affairs disclosure. This may not be the name of the person required to file in the case where someone else has the authority to file on behalf of them.
"certification_phone", -- The phone number provided during certification
"certification_name", -- The name of the person that certified the submission of the financial affairs disclosure. This may not be the name of the person required to file in the case where someone else has the authority to file on behalf of them.
"receipt_date" -- The date the financial affairs disclosure was first received. The date received will be the date the disclosure was first received, even if the disclosure is later amended.
FROM
"wa-gov/financial-affairs-disclosures-ehbc-shxw:latest"."financial_affairs_disclosures"
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 wa-gov/financial-affairs-disclosures-ehbc-shxw 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 wa-gov/financial-affairs-disclosures-ehbc-shxw: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 wa-gov/financial-affairs-disclosures-ehbc-shxwCheckout 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 wa-gov/financial-affairs-disclosures-ehbc-shxw:latestThis will download all the objects for the latest tag of wa-gov/financial-affairs-disclosures-ehbc-shxw 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 wa-gov/financial-affairs-disclosures-ehbc-shxw: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 wa-gov/financial-affairs-disclosures-ehbc-shxw: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, wa-gov/financial-affairs-disclosures-ehbc-shxw is just another Postgres schema.