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Get the Report →Analyze HCL Domino Data in R
Create data visualizations and use high-performance statistical functions to analyze HCL Domino data in Microsoft R Open.
Access HCL Domino data with pure R script and standard SQL. You can use the CData ODBC Driver for HCL Domino and the RODBC package to work with remote HCL Domino data in R. By using the CData Driver, you are leveraging a driver written for industry-proven standards to access your data in the popular, open-source R language. This article shows how to use the driver to execute SQL queries to HCL Domino data and visualize HCL Domino data in R.
Install R
You can complement the driver's performance gains from multi-threading and managed code by running the multithreaded Microsoft R Open or by running R linked with the BLAS/LAPACK libraries. This article uses Microsoft R Open (MRO).
Connect to HCL Domino as an ODBC Data Source
Information for connecting to HCL Domino follows, along with different instructions for configuring a DSN in Windows and Linux environments.
Connecting to Domino
To connect to Domino data, set the following properties:
- URL: The host name or IP of the server hosting the Domino database. Include the port of the server hosting the Domino database. For example: http://sampleserver:1234/
- DatabaseScope: The name of a scope in the Domino Web UI. The driver exposes forms and views for the schema governed by the specified scope. In the Domino Admin UI, select the Scopes menu in the sidebar. Set this property to the name of an existing scope.
Authenticating with Domino
Domino supports authenticating via login credentials or an Azure Active Directory OAuth application:
Login Credentials
To authenticate with login credentials, set the following properties:
- AuthScheme: Set this to "OAuthPassword"
- User: The username of the authenticating Domino user
- Password: The password associated with the authenticating Domino user
The driver uses the login credentials to automatically perform an OAuth token exchange.
AzureAD
This authentication method uses Azure Active Directory as an IdP to obtain a JWT token. You need to create a custom OAuth application in Azure Active Directory and configure it as an IdP. To do so, follow the instructions in the Help documentation. Then set the following properties:
- AuthScheme: Set this to "AzureAD"
- InitiateOAuth: Set this to GETANDREFRESH. You can use InitiateOAuth to avoid repeating the OAuth exchange and manually setting the OAuthAccessToken.
- OAuthClientId: The Client ID obtained when setting up the custom OAuth application.
- OAuthClientSecret: The Client secret obtained when setting up the custom OAuth application.
- CallbackURL: The redirect URI defined when you registered your app. For example: https://localhost:33333
- AzureTenant: The Microsoft Online tenant being used to access data. Supply either a value in the form companyname.microsoft.com or the tenant ID.
The tenant ID is the same as the directory ID shown in the Azure Portal's Azure Active Directory > Properties page.
When you configure the DSN, you may also want to set the Max Rows connection property. This will limit the number of rows returned, which is especially helpful for improving performance when designing reports and visualizations.
Windows
If you have not already, first specify connection properties in an ODBC DSN (data source name). This is the last step of the driver installation. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.
Linux
If you are installing the CData ODBC Driver for HCL Domino in a Linux environment, the driver installation predefines a system DSN. You can modify the DSN by editing the system data sources file (/etc/odbc.ini) and defining the required connection properties.
/etc/odbc.ini
[CData Domino Source]
Driver = CData ODBC Driver for HCL Domino
Description = My Description
Server = https://domino.corp.com
AuthScheme = OAuthPassword
User = my_domino_user
Password = my_domino_password
For specific information on using these configuration files, please refer to the help documentation (installed and found online).
Load the RODBC Package
To use the driver, download the RODBC package. In RStudio, click Tools -> Install Packages and enter RODBC in the Packages box.
After installing the RODBC package, the following line loads the package:
library(RODBC)
Note: This article uses RODBC version 1.3-12. Using Microsoft R Open, you can test with the same version, using the checkpoint capabilities of Microsoft's MRAN repository. The checkpoint command enables you to install packages from a snapshot of the CRAN repository, hosted on the MRAN repository. The snapshot taken Jan. 1, 2016 contains version 1.3-12.
library(checkpoint)
checkpoint("2016-01-01")
Connect to HCL Domino Data as an ODBC Data Source
You can connect to a DSN in R with the following line:
conn <- odbcConnect("CData Domino Source")
Schema Discovery
The driver models HCL Domino APIs as relational tables, views, and stored procedures. Use the following line to retrieve the list of tables:
sqlTables(conn)
Execute SQL Queries
Use the sqlQuery function to execute any SQL query supported by the HCL Domino API.
byname <- sqlQuery(conn, "SELECT Name, Address FROM ByName WHERE City = 'Miami'", believeNRows=FALSE, rows_at_time=1)
You can view the results in a data viewer window with the following command:
View(byname)
Plot HCL Domino Data
You can now analyze HCL Domino data with any of the data visualization packages available in the CRAN repository. You can create simple bar plots with the built-in bar plot function:
par(las=2,ps=10,mar=c(5,15,4,2))
barplot(byname$Address, main="HCL Domino ByName", names.arg = byname$Name, horiz=TRUE)