Help with Data Transformation

The data is initially extracted from an SQL database into Excel, then saved as a tab-delimited text file for use in R.

You might also want to look at the SQL packages for R so you can skip
this manual step. I'd recommend starting with
http://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/R-data.html#Relational-databases

Hadley

Assistant Professor / Dobelman Family Junior Chair
Department of Statistics / Rice University
http://had.co.nz/