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 2021_federal_census_edmonton_boundaries table in this repository, by referencing it like:
"edmonton-ca/2021-federal-census-edmonton-boundaries-3np6-c8en:latest"."2021_federal_census_edmonton_boundaries"or in a full query, like:
SELECT
":id", -- Socrata column ID
"dguid", -- Dissemination Geography Unique Identifier.
"dauid", -- Uniquely identifies a dissemination area (composed of the 2-digit province/territory unique identifier followed by the 2-digit census division code and the 4-digit dissemination area code).
"cmapuid", -- Uniquely identifies the provincial or territorial part of a census metropolitan area or census agglomeration in Canada (composed of the 2-digit province or territory unique identifier followed by the 3-digit census metropolitan area or census agglomeration code).
"cmaname", -- Census metropolitan area or census agglomeration name.
"dguidp",
"cmauid", -- Census metropolitan area or census agglomeration name.
"cdtype", -- Census division name.
"cdname", -- Census division name.
"cduid", -- niquely identifies a census division (composed of the 2-digit province/territory unique identifier followed by the 2-digit census division code).
"_predicate",
"pruid", -- Uniquely identifies a province or territory.
"landarea", -- Land area of geographic area, in square kilometres (km2)
"ccsname", -- Census consolidated subdivision name.
"ccsuid", -- Uniquely identifies a census consolidated subdivision (composed of the 2-digit province/territory unique identifier followed by the 2-digit census division code and the 3-digit census consolidated subdivision code).
"boundary_type", -- The geometry type provided by Stats Can
"cmatype", -- A one character field indicating whether the unit is a census metropolitan area, a tracted census agglomeration or a non-tracted census agglomeration.
"the_geom" -- geometry
FROM
"edmonton-ca/2021-federal-census-edmonton-boundaries-3np6-c8en:latest"."2021_federal_census_edmonton_boundaries"
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 edmonton-ca/2021-federal-census-edmonton-boundaries-3np6-c8en 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 edmonton-ca/2021-federal-census-edmonton-boundaries-3np6-c8en: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 edmonton-ca/2021-federal-census-edmonton-boundaries-3np6-c8enCheckout 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 edmonton-ca/2021-federal-census-edmonton-boundaries-3np6-c8en:latestThis will download all the objects for the latest tag of edmonton-ca/2021-federal-census-edmonton-boundaries-3np6-c8en 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 edmonton-ca/2021-federal-census-edmonton-boundaries-3np6-c8en: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 edmonton-ca/2021-federal-census-edmonton-boundaries-3np6-c8en: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, edmonton-ca/2021-federal-census-edmonton-boundaries-3np6-c8en is just another Postgres schema.