Whether your data is hosted on the web, stored in a database, or saved in a local file, you can access it from Observable with these techniques.

Mike Bostock

Observable

Introduction to data

File attachments

Visnu Pitiyanuvath

Connecting to databases

Self-hosted database proxies

Annie Zhang

SQL cell

Wiltse Carpenter

Cloud files

Introduction to secrets

Cobus Theunissen

AWS S3 private file access

Justin Ting

Data table cell

Databases panel and schema viewer

Sample datasets

Ian Johnson

Curated datasets

SQLite

Custom database clients for use with Observable SQL cells.

Database Clients

Learn how Observable works, from first edit to publish.

Documentation

Getting Data In and Out

Resources for working with SQL in Observable

Examples for Data Analysts

Our SQL cells can now display interactive summary charts as part of the results table! 

Staff Pick: SQL Cells

This is really cool. Could you add support for Arrow tables as return values from databases rather than just arrays of objects?

Dominik Moritz

Suggestion:   could you add all filters feature of Data table cell to the SQL cells?

I was using SQL cells, but later found Data table cells have more features of those filters, hiding/showing more or less columns, have to define a variable to hold the SQL query results, then call a Data table instead, to have all such good features,

but SQL cells don't have such features, make it less useful; Could you Ob guys make all Data table features also available to SQL cells?

Someone might argue can change SQL to hide/show columns, and ordering and filtering, but it's just less convenient, and sometimes don't want to re-run an already expensive 100+ lines SQL; the Data table client side filtering is just better

Tech@M

Hi Tech@M. Thank you for your feedback. We originally separated the functionality of the Data Table cell and the SQL cell because we were unsure whether it would be obvious to users where the filters were being applied, and we did not want to modify the original SQL statement. However, we have heard similar requests from users recently and we are evaluating ways to consolidate the user experiences for SQL and Data Table cells.

In the meantime, the workaround I would recommend is to name your SQL cell and then create another Data Table cell from the SQL cell. That allows you to run the SQL query only once and use the UI-based interactive filters as needed.

Matt Brown

chinook.db

SQLCell_SummaryTableInteractive_v2.png

SQLCell_Hist_Before.png

SQLCell_Hist_After.png

SQLCell_Message.png

SQLCell_SummaryChartHeaders_v2.png

rowHoverSummaryCharts.png

schemaBrowser.png

Screen Shot 2022-11-02 at 9.22.25 AM.png

schemaBrowser

longTracks

filteredQuery

summaryCharts

customDB

custom