[R] Rserve and R to R communication

[Ramon Diaz-Uriarte]

On 4/9/07, Gregory Warnes <gregory.warnes at mac.com> wrote:
>
> You may find it easier to use NetWorkSpaces for R (see http://nws-
> r.sourceforge.net/), which provides a simple mechanism for sending
> tasks to "worker" R processes and collect the results back when done.
>
> -G

Thanks, Greg. Yes, I am actually playing around with nws too.

Best,

R.




>
> On Apr 9, 2007, at 12:08PM , Matthew Keller wrote:
>
> > Hi Ramon,
> >
> > I've been interested in responses to your question. I have what I
> > think is a similar issue - I have a very large simulation script and
> > would like to be able to modularize it by having a main script that
> > calls lots of subscripts - but I haven't done that yet because the
> > only way I could think to do it was to call a subscript, have it run,
> > save the objects from the subscript, and then call those objects back
> > into the main script, which seems like a very slow and onerous way to
> > do it.
> >
> > Would Rserve do what I'm looking for?
> >
> > On 4/7/07, Ramon Diaz-Uriarte <rdiaz02 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Dear All,
> >>
> >> The "clients.txt" file of the latest Rserve package, by Simon
> >> Urbanek,
> >> says, regarding its R client,
> >>
> >> "(...) a simple R client, i.e. it allows you to connect to Rserve
> >> from
> >> R itself. It is very simple and limited,  because Rserve was not
> >> primarily meant for R-to-R communication (there are better ways to do
> >> that), but it is useful for quick interactive connection to an Rserve
> >> farm."
> >>
> >> Which are those better ways to do it? I am thinking about using
> >> Rserve
> >> to have an R process send jobs to a bunch of Rserves in different
> >> machines. It is like what we could do with Rmpi (or pvm), but without
> >> the MPI layer. Therefore, presumably it'd be easier to deal with
> >> network problems, machine's failures, using checkpoints, etc. (i.e.,
> >> to try to get better fault tolerance).
> >>
> >> It seems that Rserve would provide the basic infrastructure for doing
> >> that and saves me from reinventing the wheel of using sockets, etc,
> >> directly from R.
> >>
> >> However, Simon's comment about better ways of R-to-R communication
> >> made me wonder if this idea really makes sense. What is the catch?
> >> Have other people tried similar approaches?
> >>
> >> Thanks,
> >>
> >> R.
> >>
> >> --
> >> Ramon Diaz-Uriarte
> >> Statistical Computing Team
> >> Structural Biology and Biocomputing Programme
> >> Spanish National Cancer Centre (CNIO)
> >> http://ligarto.org/rdiaz
> >>
> >> ______________________________________________
> >> R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> >> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> >> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-
> >> guide.html
> >> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
> >>
> >
> >
> > --
> > Matthew C Keller
> > Postdoctoral Fellow
> > Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics
> >
> > ______________________________________________
> > R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-
> > guide.html
> > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>
>


-- 
Ramon Diaz-Uriarte
Statistical Computing Team
Structural Biology and Biocomputing Programme
Spanish National Cancer Centre (CNIO)
http://ligarto.org/rdiaz