[R] RJDBC vs RMySQL vs ???

[Ralf B]

I am running a simple SQL SELECT statement that involvs 50k + data
points using R and the RJDBC interface. I am facing very slow response
times in both the RGUI and the R console. When running this SQL
statement directly in a SQL client I have processing times that are a
lot lot faster (which means that the SQL statement itself is not the
problem).

Did any of you compare RJDBC vs RMySQL or is there a better, more
efficient way to extract large data from databases using R? Would you
recommend dumping data out completely into flat files and working with
flat files instead? I expected that this would not be such a problem
given that businesses maintain their data in DBs and R is supposed to
be good in shifting around data. Am I doing something wrong?

Ralf