Actually, tangentially, JC, I have a deep suspicion that many computer languages are not written to solve problems. They are sometimes an effort by someone to implement a new paradigm different than what others have tried before or to protect the programmer from themselves or to demand extensive rigor so the result almost proves itself and so on.
Only after the language is in place, might they look for a problem that might be solved using it. Kidding aside, some aspects of R may not have been as useful early on in that the use of multi-dimensional arrays is not as common a need in many areas of endeavor. But it has taken on more meaning in areas like AI. Other languages that did not support some concepts like that well, have often had to add it in. The problem today in looking at computer languages is how ALIKE they are becoming as features keep being grafted on to make each language have features already found in another. If you look at the question about SQL and R, you might note that although base R had lots of functionality, some aspects you see in extensions like dplyr are attempts to in some way mimic SQL or do things different or even better. Consider the many clauses allowed in a SQL "select" statement and map that onto a dplyr query in a pipeline with what seems like lots of clauses. Base R before the pipe did not lend itself so easily to that. -----Original Message----- From: R-help <r-help-boun...@r-project.org> On Behalf Of J C Nash Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2024 11:58 AM To: r-help@r-project.org Subject: Re: [R] SQL and R - tangential My late friend Morven Gentleman, not long after he stepped down from being chair of Computer Science at Waterloo, said that it seemed computer scientists had to create a new computer language for every new problem they encountered. If we could use least squares to measure this approximation, we'd likely be suspicious of a terribly small error measure or overly high R^2. JN On 2024-12-11 11:11, avi.e.gr...@gmail.com wrote: > Akshay, > > Your question has way too many answers. > > SQL has a long history and early versions came long before R arrived on the > scene. There is a huge embedded base of hardware and software dedicated to > managing databases. It has some features that most R programs do not even > dream of doing. Besides easily handling massive amounts of data or sometimes > tweaking queries to possibly run more efficiently, there are all kinds of > issue of how to manage multiple people accessing and changing the data at > about the same time, or rolling the data back to an earlier checkpoint. > > R came along later and, as Ben pointed out, adds all kinds of things SQL > does not have and likely does not need, or alternate ways to do things. > > For many people now, the workload is to use a programming language, and R is > not the only one used, which has enhanced with packages or modules that > allow access in a fairly general way to one or many databases running > various versions of SQL. The programmer uses this API in many ways. > > In some ways, it is just a way to tell the database what to do without much > other processing. You can ask to open a connection to the server, do a query > that gets translated to SQL (or you can provide the actual SQL) and let the > remote (or local) machine do much of the work. For example, imagine a > database with terabytes of data and all you want is a few rows/columns that > meet your query. In R, you might have to open a collection of huge CSV files > and fill more memory than you have and do the query somehow. If the data is > remote, we are talking about a huge receiving of data. Using SQL divides the > work so you do parts here and parts there. > > Why use a local MYSQL? Part of the answer is that you have a fairly > optimized and debugged system that does it well and lets the programmer > focus on the parts they need to add within R like complex analyses. Part is > portability, as you can later move the data outside your machine and with > minor changes, your program should still work. And, there are many other > scenarios such as wanting to gather data from different sources such as > connecting to multiple remote databases and getting filtered data and doing > an analysis across that data and perhaps updating them. > > R used in ways like this provides lots of flexibility. But part of the > question is like asking why there are a hundred programming languages still > in use out there. Why do we need so many? In short, we don't necessarily > need all or even most of them but they are there because various people > developed them and used them and it is not trivial to get people to switch > and maybe abandon all the older software or try to rewrite it. > > Having said that, I think a large fraction of R users have never had any > particular reason to learn SQL. Many have never used it directly or even > indirectly. I know someone who I have programmed for who calls some expert > to do a SQL query and save the results in CSV files and then works directly > in R on those files. I have pointed out to them that their life could be > even easier if they got a more focused dump of the SQL data with some of the > added processing done in SQL and then a smaller amount of data coming into > the R side. > > I also note that languages like R and python can have parts that run fairly > slowly. Arguably, most versions of SQL have been tuned over decades ... > > > -----Original Message----- > From: R-help <r-help-boun...@r-project.org> On Behalf Of akshay kulkarni > Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2024 8:17 AM > To: R help Mailing list <r-help@r-project.org> > Subject: [R] SQL and R > > dear Members, > I have recently started studying SQL and MySQL. > My question is, what exactly is SQL used for? That is, whatever can be done > by SQL, like subsetting and filtering of data sets, can also be done by R. > What's, then, the advantage of SQL? It is OK if you tag this question as > offtopic, but I could'nt find any info on the web. Can you please refer me > to some online resources that shed some light on this? Finally, how does SQL > complement R? Are both dependent? > > THanking you, > Yours sincerely, > AKSHAY M KULKARNI > > [https://s-install.avcdn.net/ipm/preview/icons/icon-envelope-tick-round-oran > ge-animated-no-repeat-v1.gif]<https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=ema > il&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=webmail> > Virus-free.www.avast.com<https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&ut > m_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=webmail> > > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide > https://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide https://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide https://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide https://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
