Getting Started¶

At the end you will have run three independent 5-minute paths through datagov — each complete on its own, using the fixtures already committed in examples/. Start with whichever path matches what you want to see first; none depends on the others.

All three assume you have the binary built (see Installation) and are running from the repo root.

Path 1 — inspect a bundled fixture (zero setup)¶

The cheapest path: no flags, no config, just point inspect at a file that already ships in the repo.

./target/release/datagov inspect examples/customers.parquet

format:       parquet
file size:    474.7 KiB
row count:    8682
column count: 18
+---------------+---------+----------+
| name          | type    | nullable |
+====================================+
| userid        | integer | true     |
| username      | string  | true     |
| ...           | ...     | ...      |
+---------------+---------+----------+
row groups: 1, compression: SNAPPY

Sample rows are printed too — email and phone are masked even here, ahead of the dedicated PII engine (see the FAQ for why).

Path 2 — profile and query the same fixture¶

profile computes column statistics; query runs SQL over the same file — both via the embedded DataFusion engine, no server involved.

./target/release/datagov profile examples/customers.parquet --columns email,state

+--------+--------+---------+----------+----------+------+--------+---------------+------------+
| column | type   | nulls % | distinct | unique % | mean | stddev | semantic type | identifier |
+==============================================================================================+
| email  | string | 0.0     | 8673     | 99.9     | -    | -      | email         | false      |
| state  | string | 0.0     | 63       | 0.7      | -    | -      | text          | false      |
+--------+--------+---------+----------+----------+------+--------+---------------+------------+

Now query the same file directly with SQL:

./target/release/datagov query "SELECT state, COUNT(*) AS total FROM 'examples/customers.parquet' GROUP BY state ORDER BY total DESC LIMIT 5"

+-------+-------+
| state | total |
+===============+
| NT    | 351   |
| NL    | 341   |
| BC    | 341   |
| QC    | 338   |
| PE    | 333   |
+-------+-------+

profile tells you what the column looks like; query lets you ask your own question of it — same underlying engine, two different jobs.

Path 3 — transpile one file across two SQL dialects¶

sql transpile performs a real dialect rewrite, not a text substitution. examples/sql/tsql/idiomatic.sql contains T-SQL's TOP clause, which has no ANSI/Postgres equivalent syntax — datagov rewrites it to LIMIT:

cat examples/sql/tsql/idiomatic.sql

SELECT TOP 10 id, name FROM customers;

./target/release/datagov sql transpile examples/sql/tsql/idiomatic.sql --from tsql --to postgres

SELECT id, name FROM customers LIMIT 10

Next: Installation for the full set of ways to get the binary, or Commands for the complete reference.