[Rd] (PR#9810) Problem with careless user of RODBC (was SQL

[ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk]

Your error message was

>> d <- sqlFetch(channel, District)
> Error in odbcTableExists(channel, sqtable) :
>        object "District" not found

and as you had not defined an object 'District' in that session, it seems 
perfectly plain.  If you want to refer to table "District" you have to 
give a character string (with quotes), not the name of an R object.

If all else fails, READ the documentation!  ?sqlFetch says

  sqtable: a database table name accessible from the connected dsn. This
           should be either a character string or a character vector of
           length 1.


I am glad you love R, but it _would_ be nice to get some credit for the 
package that you are using without apparently being aware that it is 
contributed work, instead of being inconvenienced clearing up after a 
non-bug report.


On Thu, 26 Jul 2007, jeff.lindon at thelearninginstitute.net wrote:

> Full_Name: Jeff Lindon
> Version: 2.5.0
> OS: mingw32
> Submission from: (NULL) (63.147.8.67)
>
>
> R 2.5.0 seems to be unable to read valid tables from SQL Server 2005 with
> Service Pack 2 installed:
>
>> version
>               _
> platform       i386-pc-mingw32
> arch           i386
> os             mingw32
> system         i386, mingw32
> status
> major          2
> minor          5.0
> year           2007
> month          04
> day            23
> svn rev        41293
> language       R
> version.string R version 2.5.0 (2007-04-23)
>> library(RODBC)
>> channel <- odbcConnect("TLIAS01", uid="jeff.lindon")
>> channel
> RODB Connection 1
> Details:
>  case=nochange
>  DSN=TLIAS01
>  UID=jeff.lindon
>  Trusted_Connection=Yes
>  WSID=TLIJLINDON
>  DATABASE=tliresearch
>> d <- sqlFetch(channel, District)
> Error in odbcTableExists(channel, sqtable) :
>        object "District" not found
>
> I have checked this problem with our CIO and he confirmed my Data Source
> configuration is correct (the connection test confirmed that R is able to
> connect to the database), and that the table really does exist and I have
> correct permissions (I work with it daily). Moreover, I was working between R
> and SQL Server 2005 with no problems before yesterday using the same exact set
> of instructions. The only change our CIO and I could think of is the recent
> installation of Service Pack 2.
>
> Unfortunately, reverting to Service Pack 1 is not currently an option, so I
> cannot be sure this is the problem. I am able to work around the issue by
> cutting and pasting the tables I need from SQL to Excel, then saving them as
> csv's. Saving directly from SQL to csv (highlighting the desired output and
> right-clicking) also causes problems for read.csv. I never tried that before
> Service Pack 2, though.
>
> I hope this information helps. I absolutely love R and thank you all so much for
> your work on it!
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595