Tools for building and working with a Postgres database for the Ztrax zillow data-set.
The Ztrax dataset, as provided, is made up of a large amount of compressed folders, each of which contains many large text files. While it's certainly worth using these text files to explore the format of the data (as we have done in our other tutorials), in the form it was provided it is not particularly useful for the purposes of large time-series or geographically segregated data analysis.
With these challenges in mind, the Zillow Urban Computing team sought to provide a means to sort this data into a database.
If you're not familiar with Postgres and do not have it installed on your machine, we recommend using Postgres.app which abstracts all the typical command-line interfacing into a packaged Mac application. Follow the installation instructions and initialize a new server.
Be sure to also configure your $PATH to use the included command-line tools:
sudo mkdir -p /etc/paths.d &&
echo /Applications/Postgres.app/Contents/Versions/latest/bin | sudo tee /etc/paths.d/postgresappGo into a new terminal session and use createdb zillow to start up a fresh database.
If you're not familiar with SQL queries and using a command line to interact with a database, we recommend using Graphical Clients. Both pgAdmin and Postico work well.
Coming Soon!