[R] Installing RODBC

[Marc Schwartz]

On Aug 20, 2014, at 5:43 PM, William Deese <williamdeese at gmail.com> wrote:

> I tried installing RODBC but got the following message:
> 
> Checks were yes until the following
> 
> checking sql.h usability... no
> checking sql.h presence... no
> checking for sql.h... no
> checking sqlext.h usability... no
> checking sqlext.h presence... no
> checking for sqlext.h... no
> configure: error: "ODBC headers sql.h and sqlext.h not found"
> ERROR: configuration failed for package ‘RODBC’
> * removing ‘/home/bill/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.1/RODBC’
> 
> Apparently RODBC was there when R was installed, but library() shows
> it is not there now, although the DBI package is. Best ideas for
> installing RODBC?
> 
> Bill


You are missing the indicated header files, which are required if you are building the package from source.

As per the extensive vignette that Prof. Ripley has provided:

  http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/RODBC/vignettes/RODBC.pdf

in Appendix A, which describes Installation, you will find:

"For other systems the driver manager of choice is likely to be unixODBC, part of almost all Linux distributions and with sources downloadable from http://www.unixODBC.org. In Linux binary distributions it is likely that package unixODBC-devel or unixodbc-dev or some such will be needed."

Thus, for whatever Linux distribution you are using, install the relevant RPMs or Debs or ...

Also, for future reference, there is a specific mailing list for DB related queries:

  https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-db

and a search of the list archives, for example using rseek.org, would likely result in your finding queries and answers to this same issue over the years.

Regards,

Marc Schwartz