Running queries

Once a synthetic database has been built, it can be queried just like any other Postgres database, which means the same tools used to connect to other Postgres databases can be used to connect to Subsalt synthetic databases.

Connecting to Subsalt's query endpoint

You can find connection details on the Profile > Connection details page in the Subsalt portal; these details won't change unless you modify your password and can be stored in your Postgres client.

If you don't have a preferred client, we recommend TablePlus as a graphical application, psql for command-line access, and psycopg2 for Python access.

For users associated with SSO-based organizations, you'll need to set a Subsalt-specific password to be able to connect - do not use the password associated with your identity provider.

Data quality

You can retrieve a detailed quality assessment for the results for any query from the Subsalt portal; read more about what information is available and how to access it in Data quality.

subsalt_other

You may notice the value subsalt_other appearing in your data when the value was not present in the source table. This is an automatic mask to any categorical field that has a very low occurrence rate, and is used to automatically reduce long-tail privacy risk.

If your column is part of your schema as a numeric field whose context is set as categorical, this subsalt_other value will appear as -9999999 to ensure that your schema type is consistent with the source.

Supported SQL features

Subsalt supports the PostgreSQL dialect of SQL, and you should use this dialect regardless of the source system's native dialect.

The Subsalt query interface is read only and only supported SELECT queries; writes and updates are not allowed and must be applied to the original data source.

Subsalt currently supports inner joins, but does not support other join types (left joins, outer joins, etc).