Analyze SingleStore Data in R via ODBC

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

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

The following connection properties are required in order to connect to data.

• Server: The host name or IP of the server hosting the SingleStore database.
• Port: The port of the server hosting the SingleStore database.
• Database (Optional): The default database to connect to when connecting to the SingleStore Server. If this is not set, tables from all databases will be returned.

Connect Using Standard Authentication

To authenticate using standard authentication, set the following:

• User: The user which will be used to authenticate with the SingleStore server.
• Password: The password which will be used to authenticate with the SingleStore server.

Connect Using Integrated Security

As an alternative to providing the standard username and password, you can set IntegratedSecurity to True to authenticate trusted users to the server via Windows Authentication.

Connect Using SSL Authentication

You can leverage SSL authentication to connect to SingleStore data via a secure session. Configure the following connection properties to connect to data:

• SSLClientCert: Set this to the name of the certificate store for the client certificate. Used in the case of 2-way SSL, where truststore and keystore are kept on both the client and server machines.
• SSLClientCertPassword: If a client certificate store is password-protected, set this value to the store's password.
• SSLClientCertSubject: The subject of the TLS/SSL client certificate. Used to locate the certificate in the store.
• SSLClientCertType: The certificate type of the client store.
• SSLServerCert: The certificate to be accepted from the server.

Connect Using SSH Authentication

Using SSH, you can securely login to a remote machine. To access SingleStore data via SSH, configure the following connection properties:

• SSHClientCert: Set this to the name of the certificate store for the client certificate.
• SSHClientCertPassword: If a client certificate store is password-protected, set this value to the store's password.
• SSHClientCertSubject: The subject of the TLS/SSL client certificate. Used to locate the certificate in the store.
• SSHClientCertType: The certificate type of the client store.
• SSHPassword: The password that you use to authenticate with the SSH server.
• SSHPort: The port used for SSH operations.
• SSHServer: The SSH authentication server you are trying to authenticate against.
• SSHServerFingerPrint: The SSH Server fingerprint used for verification of the host you are connecting to.
• SSHUser: Set this to the username that you use to authenticate with the SSH server.

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 SingleStore 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 SingleStore Source]
Driver = CData ODBC Driver for SingleStore
Description = My Description
User = myUser
Password = myPassword
Database = NorthWind
Server = myServer
Port = 3306

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 SingleStore Data as an ODBC Data Source

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

conn <- odbcConnect("CData SingleStore Source")

Schema Discovery

The driver models SingleStore 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 SingleStore API.

orders <- sqlQuery(conn, "SELECT ShipName, ShipCity FROM Orders WHERE ShipCountry = 'USA'", believeNRows=FALSE, rows_at_time=1)

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

View(orders)

Plot SingleStore Data

You can now analyze SingleStore 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(orders$ShipCity, main="SingleStore Orders", names.arg = orders$ShipName, horiz=TRUE)

👁 A basic bar plot. (Salesforce is shown.)