R/S-Database Interface

The R/S Database Interface, RS-DBI, is a set of classes and methods for interfacing R, S, and S-Plus to relational database systems (RDBMS). For details see A Common Interface to Relational Databases from R and S (or as an Adobe's PDF file).

Please send us your suggestions and comments on the RS-DBI to either the The R Databases Special Interest Group or The Omega Project for Statistical Computing

Available Implementations

We have RS-DBI interfaces to MySQL, SQLite, and Oracle. You may download the code from here (for a DBI implementation to PostgreSQL see RPgSQL).

Other Database Connections from R

The following R packages provide connectivity to databases. Each package defines its own set of classes and methods (except RPgSQL which has its own implementation of the RS-DBI) to connect R and the corresponding database(s).

RPgSQL is a DBI-compatible implementation of the RS-DBI using the older S version 3 style classes originally written by Timothy Keitt to connect R to PostgreSQL. The package is currently being maintained by Jianhua Zhang and is available as part of the Bio Conductor project.
RODBC is a non-DBI interface originally written by Michael Lapsley and greatly enhanced by Prof. Brian D. Ripley that connects R to any ODBC database.
RmSQL by Torsten Hothorn connects R to Mini SQL (mSQL).

Other Database Connections from S-Plus

Depending on the platform it's running, S-Plus provides access to some DBMS through the importData/exportData functions. Under Microsoft Windows you may import/export data through ODBC; under Solaris (and only Solaris) you may import data from Informix, Oracle, and Sybase. See also the function executeSQL.

David A James
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