client-server setup for R

If I'm not mistaken, the problem of sharing applications on a Windows server
among several users is not particular to R, but applies generally to that
environment, and Reid's suggestion is the cheap(-est.?) way of getting
around it.  (Windows is simply not designed for that kind of usage, whereas
Linux, like Unix, _is_ designed for that.)  The problem is that it'd be
difficult to cut-and-paste graphics as you could on a Windows box (although
that might not be doable via remote desktop, either --- I don't know).

I routinely run upwards of 4 different, simultaneous R sessions on my 1.6GHz
P-M laptop with 1GB ram, along with a few other applications.  Never have
problems as long as none of them deal with very large data.

Andy

From: Huntsinger, Reid

You have probably considered this and it's not an option, but just in 
case it is, I suspect you could buy a dual Xeon machine with 4 GB RAM 
and run Linux + Samba etc for far less than the license fees for the 
Windows Server OS and S+ components. (Probably a whole cluster, in 
fact!) Then users could use Cygwin's X server or Xvnc on their Windows 
desktops to run things like R on it. The setup takes a little time, but 
ongoing maintenance requirements are very low.

Reid Huntsinger

-----Original Message-----
From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch
[mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of roger bos
Sent: Thursday, March 24, 2005 10:57 AM
To: R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
Subject: Re: [R] client-server setup for R


Maybe I didn't state my question as well as I should have.  First of
all, this is a windows environment.  I currently run R on my desktop
and I also have a server that I use that the connect to using remote
desktop.  Each machine has 4GB of memory and is a P4.  I run R on my
machine and on the server so I can have two programs running at once.
Other people in the company don't have as much memory as I do and have
older machines, so they may have trouble running R on their desktop.
And two people can't remote desktop into the server at the same time.

So my restated question is, how do I share my server with other useRs?
 If this is more of an IT question than an R question, I apologize,
but it seems that S+ have a server version where clients connect from
their desktop and submit jobs and I was wonder is there is an R
version.




On Thu, 24 Mar 2005 09:47:53 -0500, Huntsinger, Reid
<reid_huntsinger at merck.com> wrote:

Is running R directly on the server machine and displaying

via X or Xvnc
an

option?

Reid Huntsinger

-----Original Message-----
From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch
[mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of roger bos
Sent: Thursday, March 24, 2005 9:28 AM
To: R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
Subject: [R] client-server setup for R

I am currently the only use-R at my company, but they are

considering

buy a more powerful server and letting multiple people use it.  They
asked me if R supports client-server setups.  I know S+ has a server
version that does that.  I didn't find anything about that on CRAN,
but hopefully someone can correct me.

I did see some stuff about R web servers
(http://franklin.imgen.bcm.tmc.edu/R.web.servers/ )
and that looked very interesting, but I don't know which one is best
and I don't want to spend all my time in HTML programming to make
front ends of all the users.  If I have no choice but to go the web
server route, which one is the most mature?

If I can't show them a pluasible solution, IT will make use buy S+
server and I will have to modify all my code to make it work.  I
really enjoy working in R.

Thanks,

Roger J. Bos

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