Home | Overview | Browser | Access | Login | Examples

Example Queries

The freeform SQL gives you a flexible way of querying the GES Science Archive. You can query any table or combination of tables and have control over the columns returned.

The following documentation is available to assist querying the GES Science Archive. However, the GES data model (that is, the tables and views comprising the database and the columns that they contain) has changed significantly between releases. Thus, the details of querying the GES Science Archive also vary between releases. Below different sets of examples are given for the different releases and you should choose the ones appropriate to the release that you are using (which will usually be the most recent).

Release iDR5 (November 2017; most recent)

• a few simple examples to get started,
• some more extensive examples,
• a SQL cookbook with a general introduction to SQL. This document pertains to release iDR1 but is nonetheless useful as an introduction to SQL.

Release iDR4 (February 2016

• a few simple examples to get started,
• some more extensive examples, which are also available as a PDF file for download (270 Kbyte),
• a SQL cookbook with a general introduction to SQL. This document pertains to release iDR1 but is nonetheless useful as an introduction to SQL.

Release iDR2iDR3 (February 2015)

• a few simple examples to get started,
• some more extensive examples, which are also available as a PDF file for download (274 Kbyte),
• the GES Science Archive Workshop held during the GES 2014 Gaia-ESO Survey Second Science Meeting used a simplified version of the above examples. Both a PDF file of the slides for this workshop (1.5 Mbyte) and a crib-sheet of queries (3.5 Kbyte) are available,
• a SQL cookbook with a general introduction to SQL. This document pertains to release iDR1 but is nonetheless useful as an introduction to SQL.

The startHere page gives additional details of the GES archive. The archive database structure (tables and columns etc), is documented in the schema browser.

Release iDR2 (July 2014)

• a few simple examples to get started,
• some more extensive examples, which are also available as a PDF file for download (180 Kbyte),
• the GES Science Archive Workshop held during the GES 2014 Gaia-ESO Survey Second Science Meeting used a simplified version of the above examples. Both a PDF file of the slides for this workshop (1.5 Mbyte) and a crib-sheet of queries (3.5 Kbyte) are available,
• a SQL cookbook with a general introduction to SQL. This document pertains to release iDR1 but is nonetheless useful as an introduction to SQL.

Release iDR1 (August 2013)

• a few simple examples to get started,
• some more extensive examples, which are also available as a PDF file for download (140 Kbyte),
• a SQL cookbook with a general introduction to SQL.

Release iDR1Prelim (May 2013)

Use the examples for the iDR1 release (above), but proceed with caution as some details are different.