connecting RMySQL to and external server

It is trivial with RODBC (I know that is not what you asked, but it is the
solution we found first).


For RMySQL, note first that the MySQL configuration file is consulted, so
the default host is specified in the client section, which is like

[client]

port=3306

[mysql]

default-character-set=latin1

Add host=foo under [client] to change the default host.

And ?dbConnect mentions a 'host' argument under '...'.  That seems to work
for me (provided of course the server allows connections from other
machines): on my home network from Windows laptop to Linux server

library(RMySQL)

Loading required package: DBI

drv <- dbDriver("MySQL")
con <- dbConnect(drv, user="ripley", host="auk", dbname="ripley")

This mixture of using the *local* configuration file overridden by
arguments is a bit dangerous: RMySQL seems not really designed for
client-server operation and there are some things that definitely do not
work.  (As I recall, that included dbWrite as that imports a file which is
on the local machine.)

On Fri, 14 Dec 2007, Adrian Dusa wrote:

Dear list,

I learned how to connect R to a local MySQL server, using:
drv <- dbDriver("MySQL")
con <- dbConnect(drv, user="root", password="mypass", dbname="mydb")

Is it possible to connect R in this way to an external server (on a
different machine, with a different IP)?

I read the documentation on ?dbConnect (and everything I could find on
the internet), but I failed to find some other relevant arguments. For
example, one needs to first connect to the external machine and only
after that to the MySQL server on that machine. Is this possible from
within R?

Thank you in advance,
Adrian