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 iowa_unemployment_compensation_fund_status_fund table in this repository, by referencing it like:
"mydata-iowa-gov/iowa-unemployment-compensation-fund-status-fund-g3t8-4ct5:latest"."iowa_unemployment_compensation_fund_status_fund"or in a full query, like:
SELECT
":id", -- Socrata column ID
"total_revenue", -- Total Revenue (millions) - Sum of Total Contributions, Interest and Other Income.
"other_income", -- Other Income (millions) - This includes revenue from a trust fund debt repayment tax collected by the federal government in 1985 and 1986 and special transfers from the U.S. Treasury in 2003 and 2009.
"interest", -- Interest Received (millions) - The amount of interest earned on the Unemployment Trust Fund account. Interest paid by the U. S Treasury is credited on the notification date for this report.
"reimbursable_contributions", -- Reimbursable Contributions (millions) - Total benefit reimbursement payments received by employers who elect to finance benefit costs by the reimbursement method.
"average_rate_taxable", -- Average Contribution Rate Based on Taxable Wages - Total regular contributions for a 12 month period divided by the taxable wages for the same period.
"contributory_wages", -- Contributory Wages (millions) - All wages or remuneration paid to workers by all taxable employers. [Total wages minus reimbursable wages]
"reimbursable_wages", -- Reimbursable Wages (millions) - Wages paid by reimbursable employers. NOTE: A reimbursable employer elects to reimburse the UI system for benefits charged instead of paying regular employer contributions. State and local governments, nonprofit organizations, and Indian tribes are permitted to elect the reimbursement method;
"total_wages", -- Total Wages (millions) - All wages or remuneration paid to workers on all payrolls covered by Unemployment Insurance.
"covered_employment", -- Covered Employment - The number of employees covered by the Iowa Unemployment Insurance program. This figure is based on employment during the pay period which includes the 12th of the each month.
"total_contributions", -- Total Contributions (millions) - Sum of regular contributions and reimbursable contributions.
"average_rate_total", -- Average Contribution Rate Based on Total Wages - Total regular contributions for a 12 month period divided by the total wages for the same period.
"regular_contributions", -- Regular Contributions (millions) - Total UI contributions received from contributory employees.
"rate_table", -- Contribution Rate Table - The Iowa Code has eight contribution rate tables. Rate tables are triggered based on the relative trust fund strength. The average contribution rate ranges from about 3.5 percent in table 1 to about 0.9 percent in table 8.
"taxable_wage_base", -- Taxable Wage Base - The maximum amount of wages paid to an employee by an employer during a tax year which are subject to UI taxes. Wages above this amount are not subject to tax. In Iowa the taxable wage base is two-thirds of the average annual wage for covered employment.
"taxable_wages", -- Taxable Wages (millions) - Wages paid by contributory employers on which UI contributions are based on. Individual employee wages above the taxable wage base not included in taxable wages.
"average_weekly_wage", -- Average Weekly Wage - Total wages divided by covered employment, divided by 52 weeks.
"year" -- Calendar Year
FROM
"mydata-iowa-gov/iowa-unemployment-compensation-fund-status-fund-g3t8-4ct5:latest"."iowa_unemployment_compensation_fund_status_fund"
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 mydata-iowa-gov/iowa-unemployment-compensation-fund-status-fund-g3t8-4ct5 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 mydata-iowa-gov/iowa-unemployment-compensation-fund-status-fund-g3t8-4ct5: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 mydata-iowa-gov/iowa-unemployment-compensation-fund-status-fund-g3t8-4ct5Checkout 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 mydata-iowa-gov/iowa-unemployment-compensation-fund-status-fund-g3t8-4ct5:latestThis will download all the objects for the latest tag of mydata-iowa-gov/iowa-unemployment-compensation-fund-status-fund-g3t8-4ct5 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 mydata-iowa-gov/iowa-unemployment-compensation-fund-status-fund-g3t8-4ct5: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 mydata-iowa-gov/iowa-unemployment-compensation-fund-status-fund-g3t8-4ct5: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, mydata-iowa-gov/iowa-unemployment-compensation-fund-status-fund-g3t8-4ct5 is just another Postgres schema.