Analyze Databox Data in R via ODBC

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

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

Start by setting the Profile connection property to the location of the Databox Profile on disk (e.g. C:\profiles\Databox.apip). Next, set the ProfileSettings connection property to the connection string for Databox (see below).

Databox API Profile Settings

To use the Databox API, you need to generate a personal access key from your Databox account. Navigate to the Databox account settings under Data Manager and generate an API key (prefixed with pak_).

After setting the following connection properties, you are ready to connect:

• AuthScheme: Set this to APIKey.
• APIKey: Set this to your Databox personal access key.

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 Databox 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 API Source]
Driver = CData ODBC Driver for Databox
Description = My Description
Profile = C:\profiles\Databox.apip
AuthScheme = APIKey
ProfileSettings = 'APIKey = your_api_key'

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 Databox Data as an ODBC Data Source

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

conn <- odbcConnect("CData API Source")

Schema Discovery

The driver models Databox 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 Databox API.

datasets <- sqlQuery(conn, "SELECT Id, Title FROM Datasets WHERE DataSourceId = '4976164'", believeNRows=FALSE, rows_at_time=1)

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

View(datasets)

Plot Databox Data

You can now analyze Databox 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(datasets$Title, main="Databox Datasets", names.arg = datasets$Id, horiz=TRUE)