Query it like a warehouse.
Some questions are joins, not lookups. SQL gives you the normalised tables directly, with the guardrails that make a public query endpoint survivable.
Intended shape
How it will look
The schema and shapes here match what the platform already serves. Only the endpoint is missing.
SELECT f.name,
f.city,
f.state,
p.submitted_charge,
p.medicare_allowed
FROM healthcare_prices p
JOIN healthcare_facilities f USING (ccn)
WHERE p.apc = '5372'
ORDER BY p.submitted_charge ASC
LIMIT 25;How it works
Design decisions, and why
Where a choice costs convenience, the reason is stated rather than hidden.
Read-only, enforced
SELECT only. No writes, no DDL, no functions that touch the filesystem or the network. The restriction lives in the connection, not in a policy document.
Statement timeouts
Every query is bounded, so one expensive scan cannot degrade the service for anyone else.
The same tables the API reads
The REST API is a view over these tables rather than a separate copy, so the two cannot disagree.
Versioned
Query a prior dataset version by name to reproduce a result you published last quarter.
Use cases
What people build with it
Cross-dataset joins
Combine charge data with demographics or contracts once more than one dataset is loaded.
Aggregations the API does not expose
Percentiles, correlations, and groupings that would be a poor fit for a REST parameter.
Notebook workflows
Point pandas or a BI tool at a connection string rather than paginating an API.
Specification
The details
| Access | Read-only SELECT. |
|---|---|
| Tables | healthcare_prices, healthcare_facilities, healthcare_procedures. |
| Timeout | Per-statement, bounded. |
| Versioning | Prior dataset versions addressable by name. |
| Status | Not built. The schema above is real; the endpoint is not. |
Questions
Asked most often
- Is Vemon SQL available today?
- No. The tables and column names shown here are the ones the API already reads, so the schema is accurate, but there is no SQL endpoint yet.
- Will it be the same data as the REST API?
- Yes — the API is a view over these tables rather than a separate copy, so the two cannot drift apart.
- Can I write or create tables?
- No. Access is read-only at the connection level, not by policy.
Also on the platform
The other surfaces
The API is live today.
While this is being built, the REST API already serves the same data.