[R-sig-DB] Re: Rdbi package [forwarded msg]

[David James]

Timothy H. Keitt wrote:
> I haven't had time to fix up the data conversion stuff. I have some old 
> routines from RPgSQL in Rdbi.PgSQL. The choice is to leave the 
> conversion behavior undefined and let each specific implementation 
> handle conversion however they see fit, or to define a set of generic 
> functions to be subclassed. The latter is preferable, but probably 
> difficult to get right given the heterogeneity among potential data 
> sources. (Or more accurately, I mean that its difficult to do cleanly; 
> if you cover all the marginal cases, it will get unwieldy.)

No need to do this, for the time being.  If I'm not mistaken, we're 
taking the Rdbi package to be a starting point for a common interface, 
so by necessity it will have to evolve as we gain experience with it
and its various driver implementations.  

I still think that we need a document (in English, that is) to describe 
the interface, its classes and generic functions, perhaps the various data 
conversion mechanisms, ways to query the metadata, and so forth
e.g., what to do with SQL keywords in R/S objects that we export to DBMS.
Also, it is in this kind of document were we could identify core and optional
features.  (Both the python and perl interfaces have such a 
specification document.)

> 
> Tim
> 
> David James wrote:
> 
> > Kurt Hornik wrote:
> > 
> >>>>>>>M Edward Borasky writes:
> >>>>>>>
> >>>Sounds good to me. At some point in the near future I may get a chance
> >>>to test it on a Windows box with MS Access; I've been using RODBC for
> >>>that.
> >>>
> >>Ok.  Will wait till tomorrow morning to allow for further reactions.
> >>
> > 
> > Not that I anticipate any major issues, but could we wait until the end
> > of this week?  I'd like to check a couple of things (one that Torsten
> > brought to my attention last week and has to do with data conversions,
> > and portability to Splus being the other).
> 
> 
> I'm not running Splus, so I haven't tried to make it compatible. It 
> would seem to be a good thing to do, although I admit, I've been pretty 
> unhappy with Mathsoft in the past because of their callous attitude 
> towards UNIX, which (as far as I know) is the environment where S 
> originated.

I understand, and I wouldn't expect people to be doing both R and 
S implementations.  All I'm suggesting is to see if we could follow 
some simple guidelines to make it easier for other people to port 
from one system to the other.  My guess is that it'll be users and/or
some of us --not Insightful-- doing the porting.

> 
> 
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > 
> > 
> >>Best,
> >>-k
> >>
> >>
> >>>>-----Original Message-----
> >>>>From: r-sig-db-admin using stat.math.ethz.ch
> >>>>[mailto:r-sig-db-admin using stat.math.ethz.ch]On Behalf Of Kurt Hornik
> >>>>Sent: Sunday, September 30, 2001 2:58 AM
> >>>>To: Kurt.Hornik using ci.tuwien.ac.at
> >>>>Cc: David James; R-SIG-DB using stat.math.ethz.ch; Timothy H. Keitt; Saikat
> >>>>DebRoy; Torsten Hothorn
> >>>>Subject: [R-sig-DB] Re: Rdbi package [forwarded msg]
> >>>>I have not seen any followup on this for almost a month.
> >>>>
> >>>>Hence, I assume that everyone is happy with the new design, and suggest
> >>>>to move Tim's package from contrib/Devel to contrib.
> >>>>
> >>>>-k
> >>>>
> > 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Timothy H. Keitt
> Department of Ecology and Evolution
> State University of New York at Stony Brook
> Stony Brook, New York 11794 USA
> Phone: 631-632-1101, FAX: 631-632-7626
> http://life.bio.sunysb.edu/ee/keitt/
> 

-- 
David A. James
Statistics Research, Room 2C-253            Phone:  (908) 582-3082       
Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies              Fax:    (908) 582-3340
Murray Hill, NJ 09794-0636