[R-sig-DB] DBI documentation

[Hadley Wickham]

On Mon, Jun 29, 2015 at 4:59 PM, Paul Gilbert <pgilbert902 using gmail.com> wrote:
> Hadley
>
> ?dbConnect says
>
>      drv: an object that inherits from ‘DBIDriver’, or a character
>           string specifying the name of DBMS driver, e.g., "RSQLite",
>           "RMySQL", "RPostgreSQL", or an existing ‘DBIConnection’
>           object (in order to clone an existing connection).
>
> and further down
>
>      manner. For instance ‘dbConnect("MySQL")’ produces an object of
>
> The inconsistency, "RMySQL" vs "MySQL", has probably existed for a long
> time, but I seem to recall that the character specifications no longer work.
> Certainly they are no longer the preferred approach. Am I wrong on that?

You're correct: it's now best to use RMySQL::MySQL() and not do
library(RMySQL).  Would you mind filing an issue on github to remind
me to fix this?

> ?dbConnect also says
>
>      ...: authorization arguments needed by the DBMS instance; these
>           typically include ‘user’, ‘password’, ‘dbname’, ‘host’,
>           ‘port’, etc.  For details see the appropriate ‘DBIDriver’.
>
> I am trying to find details for the MySQL driver and it is less than obvious
> where that would be. (Trying to verify if the complete argument name is
> "user" or "username" for MySQL.) Could "For details see the appropriate
> ‘DBIDriver’" be expanded? It is not really even obvious how to print out the
> correct function to get this information from the code.

The easiest way is ?dbConnect(RMySQL::MySQL())

Probably a note in the docs would be a good idea, since many people
aren't familiar with getting help on S4 methods.

Hadley


-- 
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