[R] RODBC and NULL values

[Jerome Asselin]

On Tue, 2006-10-17 at 11:49 +0100, Mark Wardle wrote:
> Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
> > What sqltype(s) are your variables?
> > 
> 
> The variables are all numeric.

I don't think this is an RODBC issue. I've had similar problems with
numeric variables in FileMaker without using RODBC.

I have exported from FileMaker to MySQL numeric variables containing
non-numeric strings. Since MySQL won't allow non-numeric characters into
numeric variables, empty strings and other non-numeric values were
replaced by the default (0). I suppose that's the same with PostgreSQL.

You might get more luck if you first convert your variables as TEXT in
FileMaker and then import them to PostgreSQL where you can reconvert
them to numeric there after fixing the NULL values. It's a bit of extra
work...

In my case, the strategy I used was to export the FileMaker data into
XML format and then run a XSLT script to insert the data as TEXT into
MySQL where I could detect and fix non-numeric strings.

Regards,
Jerome

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