I'm working with a 350MB CSV file on a server that has 3GB of RAM, yet I'm
hitting a memory error when I try to store the data frame into a survey
design object, the R object that stores data for complex sample survey data.

When I launch R, I execute the following line from Windows:
"C:\Program Files\R\R-2.9.1\bin\Rgui.exe" --max-mem-size=2047M
Anything higher, and I get an error message saying the maximum has been set
to 2047M.

Here are the commands:
> library(survey)

#this step takes more than five minutes
> data08<-read.csv("data08.csv",header=TRUE,nrows=210437)

> object.size(data08)
#329877112 bytes

#Looking at Windows Task Manager, Mem Usage for Rgui.exe is already 659,632K

> brr.dsgn <-svrepdesign( data = data08 , repweights = data08[, grep(
"^repwgt" , colnames( data08)) ], type = "BRR" , combined.weights = TRUE ,
weights = data08$mainwgt )
#Error: cannot allocate vector of size 254.5 Mb

#The survey design object does not get created.

#This also causes Windows Task Manager, Mem Usage to spike to 1,748,136K

#And here are some memory diagnostics
> memory.limit()
[1] 2047
> memory.size()
[1] 1449.06
> gc()
           used  (Mb) gc trigger   (Mb)  max used   (Mb)
Ncells   131148   3.6     593642   15.9  15680924  418.8
Vcells 45479988 347.0  173526492 1324.0 220358611 1681.3

A description of the survey package can be found here:
http://faculty.washington.edu/tlumley/survey/

I tried creating a work-around by using the database-backed survey objects
(DB SO), included in the survey package to conserve memory on larger
datasets like this one.  Unfortunately, I don't think the survey package
supports database connections for replicate weight designs yet, since I've
only been able to get a database connection working after creating a
svydesign object and not a svrepdesign object - and also because neither the
DB SO website nor the svrepdesign help page make any mention of those
parameters.

The DB SOs are described in detail here:
http://faculty.washington.edu/tlumley/survey/svy-dbi.html

Any advice would be truly appreciated.

Thanks,
 Anthony Damico

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