Analyze Phoenix Data in R



Create data visualizations and use high-performance statistical functions to analyze Phoenix data in Microsoft R Open.

Access Phoenix data with pure R script and standard SQL. You can use the CData ODBC Driver for Phoenix and the RODBC package to work with remote Phoenix 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 Phoenix data and visualize Phoenix 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 Phoenix as an ODBC Data Source

Information for connecting to Phoenix follows, along with different instructions for configuring a DSN in Windows and Linux environments.

Connect to Apache Phoenix via the Phoenix Query Server. Set the Server and Port (if different from the default port) properties to connect to Apache Phoenix. The Server property will typically be the host name or IP address of the server hosting Apache Phoenix.

Authenticating to Apache Phoenix

By default, no authentication will be used (plain). If authentication is configured for your server, set AuthScheme to NEGOTIATE and set the User and Password properties (if necessary) to authenticate through Kerberos.

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 Phoenix 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 ApachePhoenix Source] Driver = CData ODBC Driver for Phoenix Description = My Description Server = localhost Port = 8765

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 Phoenix Data as an ODBC Data Source

You can connect to a DSN in R with the following line:

conn <- odbcConnect("CData ApachePhoenix Source")

Schema Discovery

The driver models Phoenix 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 Phoenix API.

mytable <- sqlQuery(conn, "SELECT Id, Column1 FROM MyTable WHERE Id = '123456'", believeNRows=FALSE, rows_at_time=1)

You can view the results in a data viewer window with the following command:

View(mytable)

Plot Phoenix Data

You can now analyze Phoenix 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(mytable$Column1, main="Phoenix MyTable", names.arg = mytable$Id, horiz=TRUE)

Ready to get started?

Download a free trial of the Phoenix ODBC Driver to get started:

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Learn more:

Apache Phoenix Icon Phoenix ODBC Driver

The Phoenix ODBC Driver is a powerful tool that allows you to connect with HBase through Apache Phoenix, directly from any applications that support ODBC connectivity.

Access Phoenix like you would a relational database - read, write, and update through a standard ODBC Driver interface.