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 green_energy_program_grants table in this repository, by referencing it like:
"delaware-gov/green-energy-program-grants-nsgd-n2gb:latest"."green_energy_program_grants"or in a full query, like:
SELECT
":id", -- Socrata column ID
"geothermal_capacity_tons", -- Size in tons of geothermal system
"payment_status", -- Processed grant awards have a status of Paid or Paid – ARRA (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act)
"ppa_lease", -- Denotes whether the system is owned vs whether the applicant has a PPA (Power of Purchase Agreement) to purchase the electricity the system produces on a per kilowatt hour basis or a lease to pay a set monthly amount for the electricity produced (available starting in 2014)
"mounting_location", -- Location of installation of PV system: rooftop, ground, tracking (available starting in 2014)
"total_rebate", -- Sum of money awarded to applicant through grant process
"total_system_costs", -- Sum of money spent on renewable energy system
"solar_water_capacity_sq_ft", -- Size in square feet of solar water heater system
"wind_capacity_kw", -- Size in kilowatts of windpower system
"pv_capacity_kw", -- Size in kilowatts of photovoltaic system
"facility_type", -- Renewable energy source for which grant application has been submitted: PV (photovoltaic), Geothermal, Solar Water Heating, Wind
"application_submission_date", -- Date of submission of grant application
"zip", -- Zip code in which the project is located
"city", -- City in which the project is located
"application_id", -- Unique identifier for each grant application
"sector" -- Type of Project: Residential, Non_Residential, Commercial, Non_Profit, Solar Lease, Solar PPA (Power Purchase Agreement)
FROM
"delaware-gov/green-energy-program-grants-nsgd-n2gb:latest"."green_energy_program_grants"
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 delaware-gov/green-energy-program-grants-nsgd-n2gb 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 delaware-gov/green-energy-program-grants-nsgd-n2gb: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 delaware-gov/green-energy-program-grants-nsgd-n2gbCheckout 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 delaware-gov/green-energy-program-grants-nsgd-n2gb:latestThis will download all the objects for the latest tag of delaware-gov/green-energy-program-grants-nsgd-n2gb 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 delaware-gov/green-energy-program-grants-nsgd-n2gb: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 delaware-gov/green-energy-program-grants-nsgd-n2gb: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, delaware-gov/green-energy-program-grants-nsgd-n2gb is just another Postgres schema.