Managing Data [Summary]
The alternative I tend to use involves storing data in an external database (in my case, PostgreSQL) and using a database driver (e.g., RPgSQL) to bring them in as needed. Sorry to muddy the waters- Andy ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Andrew J Perrin - andrew_perrin at unc.edu - http://www.unc.edu/~aperrin Assistant Professor of Sociology, U of North Carolina, Chapel Hill 269 Hamilton Hall, CB#3210, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3210 USA
On Mon, 25 Feb 2002, Magill, Brett wrote:
A while ago I asked about data management approaches in R. I was asked by several people to post a summary of the responses and alas I am just getting around to doing it. I received several comments, both on and off list. Below is a compilation of these responses. Hope this is as helpful to others as it was to me. Best, Brett 1. Frank Harrell recommended a section, "Operating in S", from his text which can be found at: http://hesweb1.med.virginia.edu/biostat/s/doc/splus.pdf 2. Jon Baron says that he does not use the files R stores at all, instead following the procedures outlined in the beginning of his text: http://www.psych.upenn.edu/~baron/rpsych.htm This approach involves "...involves keeping raw data in separate files, each with a name (supposedly a useful mnemonic), such as cba1.data, and scripts in other separate files, such as cba1.R." A script is written to read, transform, manipulate, and analyze data. Jim Lemon uses a similar approach but adds "Just to forestall any confusion, I noticed that [Jon Baron] didn't mention using read.table() or scan() in the *.R file of commands to read in the data each time the script is run. That way you never trash your data, and any data edits you do outside of R are reflected in the next run of the script." 3. David Brahm offers another approach, a package he developed called g.data available at: http://cran.us.r-project.org/src/contrib/PACKAGES.html#g.data David says that this approach will be most intuitive to S-plus users. The package "...manages data in R in a manner very similar to the way S-Plus does. You assign 'permanent' objects to a particular position in your search path (usually pos=2), then save all objects in that position with a call to g.data.save()." Brett A. Magill, Evaluation Associate Research and Product Development Health, Safety and Community Services American Red Cross magillb at usa.redcross.org -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
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