CODEWITHSUNDEEP
postgresqlr
Anonymous
Anonymous

Reputation:

Connecting GNU R to PostgreSQL

I have GNU R installed (the S-like statistics package; version 2.8.1) and PostgreSQL (8.4.1), but I cannot connect GNU R to my RDBMS.

When I first did this (years ago - code lost) DBI for R didn't exist. Now it does. I am also confused as to which R package to use. A quick search returns:

My Linux distribution doesn't package R packages (irony) but I am comfortable running R CMD INSTALL package.tar.gz.

I installed RPostgreSQL: a lot of documentation says to call dbConnect but I get the following error message: Error: object "dbConnect" not found.

Upvotes: 8

Views: 4399

Answers (4)

Peter M
Peter M

Reputation: 844

My guess is you need to install the DBI package (most database packages depend on it).

If you use install.packages('RPpostgreSQL',dep=TRUE) from within R it should take care of any dependency issues.

Upvotes: 1

Dean Eckles
Dean Eckles

Reputation:

RODBC works great for me. You just have to set up a data source name (DSN) for the database you want to connect to. I find this nice because then the specific connection info does not have to be stored in R, and it may vary for your collaborators.

Also, yes, it sounds like you haven't loaded the RPostgresSQL package.

Upvotes: 0

Dirk is no longer here
Dirk is no longer here

Reputation: 368231

Just for completeness, you have two more options

  • RODBC which is very mature and feature-complete but doesn't correspond to the DBI framework as the PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, Oracle, ... interfaces do. You also need to fiddle with ODBC setup files which can be tricky. But ODBC may be useful for other data access uses too.
  • RdbiPgSQL from the BioConductor project which is also mature but uses yet another protocol that was to compete with DBI and never took of. This PostgreSQL package is featureful though.

But as a RPostgreSQL maintainer/co-author I am glad you found this one. As the other poster suggested, try library(RPostgreSQL) before issueing commands. If you encounter other problems, feel free to email me off-SO with a bug report.

Edit: There is another option of embedding R inside PostgreSQL using Joe Conway's PL/R.

Upvotes: 9

Jouni K. Seppänen
Jouni K. Seppänen

Reputation: 44118

Maybe you need to run require(RPostgreSQL) before you can use dbConnect?

Upvotes: 3

Related Questions