[R] Using the Ingres SQL database with R

[Denis Brown]

Dear R Forum members,

I am wondering of anyone has used R to pull data from an Ingres SQL database?

My initial thoughts would be to use the RJDBC package and Ingres's JDBC driver.

Before I get this thing together, has anyone used this combination and can 
verify that it works, or can forewarn me of any "gotchas" that may be 
lurking in the shadows?   One uncomfortable feature with JDBC and similar 
mechanisms is the need to expose the database user authentication details 
in the clear.   Our data is quite sensitive; while the systems upon which 
this will run are well protected with firewalls, etc, etc I hesitate to 
employ a scheme which exposes cleartext passwords...

I am thinking to employ a nested call in the JDBC interface which pulls the 
authentication data from a severely (permission) restricted file.   All I 
then need to worry about is whether that authentication data is cached :-)

The alternative I suppose might be to create an R package using say C or 
C++ which interfaces via Ingres's embedded SQL commands.   Once compiled it 
may offer a level of security against cracking?   Thoughts appreciated.

Kind regards,
Denis