[R] -newbie | RODBC import query

[Evan Cooch]

Greetings -

After 20+ years of using SAS, for a variety of reasons, I'm using [R] 
for a bunch of things - while I'm getting a pretty good a handling 
[R] for script programming, and statistical analysis, I'm struggling 
with 'pulling data into [R]'. For reasons beyond my control, a number 
of the files I get sent to 'work with' are in Dbase format (*.dbf). 
For another host of reasons, I need to be able to read directly into 
[R] from these files (no using intermediate .CVS or delimited ASCII files).

OK, so after a bit of reading, seems I need to use RODBC (I'm using 
[R] 2.2.1 for Windows, at the moment). But, I can't seem to figure 
out the basics. Suppose the file I need to 'work with' is 
test.dbf  So, I try the following:

  library(RODBC);
  import_dat <- odbcConnectDbase("c:\documents and 
settings\egc\desktop\test.dbf")

OK, so far so good - well, at least no outright errors gets chunked 
out to the console. Now what? Here's where I get stuck. There is a 
table in the test.dbf file called TEST. But, the following

tester <- sqlFetch(import_dat,"TEST")

blows up - I get the following error message in the console:

Error in odbcTableExists(import_dat, sqtable) :
         'TEST': table not found on channel

OK - so it doesn't seem to find the table TEST in test.dbf. I tried 
lower-case for TEST (i.e., test), but that doesn't seem to solve the 
problem. OK, so lets pretend I don't know what the table in test.dbf 
is called, and use sqlTables instead:

table_list <- sqlTables(import_dat)

When I then enter table_list in the console, I get

[1] TABLE_CAT   TABLE_SCHEM TABLE_NAME  TABLE_TYPE  REMARKS
<0 rows> (or 0-length row.names)

Meaning, what? It almost seems that its telling me there is nothing 
in test.dbf. Well, there definitely is (I can open it up in Excel - 
shudder), but, perhaps it is unable to recognize whats there.


Suggestions? Apologies if this is easy, or (worse) and FAQ.

Thanks!