[R] Seeking pointers to help

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Fri, 14 Jan 2005, Sean Davis wrote:

> On 1/14/05 19:34, "Donna-n-Doug Finner" <stonehusky at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Noob alert....
>> I've been through most of the available documentation at a fairly high
>> level - if I've missed the obvious, just point me in the right
>> direction.

Can I suggest technical questions like this are better sent to R-devel?
Few R users will know what

>> Backend data stored in MySQL db
>> Front end user interface built using PHP/HTML running on Apache.

means.

>> What I'd like to build:
>> Windows XP system (actually, I'd prever a *nix but must use Win).
>> Backend data stored in MySQL db
>> Front end user interface built using PHP/HTML running on Apache.
>>
>> User builds a select via the web front end.
>> User selects a canned analysis or graph for the data set.
>> System grabs the data, passes the data to R, magic happens, graphs displayed.
>> User isn't exposed to the R-GUI.
>>
>> Is this kind of design possible?

Yes.  There are a number of existing R-cgi interfaces, although they seem 
primarily designed for Unix.  See section 4 of the FAQ.

>> Without going into detail, how would this kind of system be
>> structured?  What keywords can I look up that fill in the blanks?  Are
>> there any samples of this type of system I can see and/or use?
>> Is there another way I should be thinking about this kind of design?
>>
>> Additional wrinkle - we may need to substitute Excel as the raw data
>> source.  I've been playing with converting XL files to tab sep var
>> files and had some level of luck.  I haven't given the ODBC method a
>> try yet since that was a 'not' recommended method.

Not recommended by whom?  It's the obvious choice to me.

>> I'm sure I'll have more to follow.  This tool looks pretty neat.
>> Thanks in advance for any tips or pointers.

> It sounds like you are early in the design process?  Have you looked at
> PostgreSQL and Pl/R?

Would that be PL/R from http://www.joeconway.com/plr/?
AFAIK it does not work on Windows since it depends on a platform-specific 
way to embed R.

> You can simply pipe the data to R in batch mode, write the graphs generated
> by R to temporary files, and then use those in your generated HTML.  There
> are numerous posts about running R in batch mode.  As for using R with PHP,
> someone else will have to comment about specifics.

That's going to be really kludgy for a Web interface, especially under 
Windows.

-- 
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