RMSSQL is an extension to the GPL R Statistics package . It allows direct, fast access to a Microsoft SQL database in R. It is based on R-Mysql (around version 0.2 - 0.4.3 ...) and REQUIRES FreeTDS (0.53-0.62.4), and accesses SQL databases defined in /etc/freetds.conf.
Currently, it has only been tested on Linux. It should be possible to port RMSSQL to other platforms that FreeTDS supports.
Please note that CropDesign N.V. has released this (old) code under the LGPL. We have no programmers currently maintaining or supporting this software! R-Mysql, on which this code was based, has since evolved a few versions further.
A possible problem has been identified with FLOAT data types selected from the MS SQL server. The current workaround is to use DOUBLE data types in the SQL table as data type instead of FLOAT.
An alternative to using RMSSQL is to use RODBC with unixODBC and FreeTDS, as described in this R-sig-DB (R Special Interest Group) post. This has not been tested by us.
RDBLib (RMSSQL) will not compile properly with FreeTDS 0.63RC10 and possibly earlier versions of 0.63 (errors with types of SYBCHAR/SYBNTEXT). Fixes are obviously welcome.
Please see our project's files page to download any releases.
If you are interested in helping out and/or continuing the development of this project, please contact us at
rmssql.opensource{@}cropdesign.com. (without the curly braces/accolades)
updated 7/2/2005