[R] Application design.

[John McKown]

I'm designing an R based application for my boss. It's not much, but
it might save him some time. What it will be doing is reading data
from an MS-SQL database and creating a number of graphs. At present,
he must log into one server to run a vendor application to display the
data in a grid. He then cuts this data and pastes it into an Excel
spreadsheet. He then generates some graphs in Excel. Which he then
cuts and pastes into a Power Point presentation. Which is the end
result for distribution to others up the food chain.

What I would like to do is read the MS-SQL data base using RODBC and
create the graphs using ggplot2 instead of using Excel. I may end up
being told to create an Excel file as well.

My real question is organizing the R programs to do this. Basically
what I was thinking of was a "master" program. It does the ODBC work
and fetches the data into one, or more, data.frames. I was then
thinking that it would be better to have separate source files for
each graph produced. I would use the source() function in the "master"
R program to load & execute each one in order. Is this a decent
origination? Or would it be better for each "create a graph" R file to
really just define a unique function which the "master" program would
then invoke? I guess this latter would be a good way to keep the
workspace "clean" since all the variables in the functinon would "go
away" when the function ended.

I guess what I'm asking is how others organize the R applications. Oh,
I plan for this to be run by my boss by double clicking on the
"master" R source file, which I will associate with the Rscript
program in Windows. Yes, this is Windows based <sigh/>.

Appreciate your thoughts. Especially if I'm really off track.

-- 
There is nothing more pleasant than traveling and meeting new people!
Genghis Khan

Maranatha! <><
John McKown