[Rd] Struggling with S3/S4 interface issues and External Pointers

[Jeffrey Horner]

I'm currently working on embedding R into the Apache2 webserver (with 
some positive results...), but I'm struggling to identify the best way 
to expose the apache data and functions to R.

A couple of thoughts:

In light of the recent discussion on "S3/S4 classes performance 
comparson", I'm leaning toward implementing the interface with S3 style 
classes. I appreciate anyones advice on this.

I JUST found (after roughly 6 months of studying R) Luke Tierney's note 
on "Finalization and Weak References in R". From the developers page, 
this note is listed as a "preliminary mechanism", but I scoured CRAN and 
noticed packages like RODBC and XML are using it. Has this mechanism 
changed from "preliminary" to "production" yet? For storing pointers in 
R variables, I've been using integer vectors which is what RMySQL does 
but doesn't seem natural.

For those interested in my Apache R implementation, please download here:

http://biostat.mc.vanderbilt.edu/twiki/pub/Main/JeffreyHorner/mod_R-0.0.tar.gz

Cheers,
-- 
Jeffrey Horner       Computer Systems Analyst         School of Medicine
615-322-8606         Department of Biostatistics   Vanderbilt University