Move Data between SQL Server and XDF File

Data Science Deep Dive

SQL Server 2016 and later

Updated: October 3, 2016

Applies To: SQL Server 2016
When you are working in a local compute context, you have access to both local data files and the SQL Server database defined
as an RxSqlServerData data source.
In this section, you'll learn how to get data and store it in a file on the local computer so that you can perform transformations
on the data. When you're done, you'll use the data in the file to create a new SQL Server table, by using rxDataStep.

Create a SQL Server Table from an XDF File

The rxImport function lets you import data from any supported data source to a local XDF file. Using a local file can be
convenient if you want to do many different analyses on data that is stored in a SQL Server database, and you want to avoid
running the same query over and over.
For this exercise, you'll use the credit card fraud data again. In this scenario, you've been asked to do some extra analysis on
users in the states of California, Oregon, and Washington. To be more efficient, you've decided to store data for just these states
on your local computer and work with the variables gender, cardholder, state, and balance.
1. Reuse the stateAbb vector you created earlier to identify the levels to include, and then print to the console the new
variable, statesToKeep.

statesToKeep<sapply(c("CA","OR","WA"),grep,stateAbb)
statesToKeep

Results

CA

OR

WA

38

48

2. Now you'll define the data you want to bring over from SQL Server, using a TransactSQL query. Later you'll use this
variable as the inData argument for rxImport.

R
importQuery<paste("SELECTgender,cardholder,balance,stateFROM",sqlFraudTable,
"WHERE(state=5ORstate=38ORstate=48)")

Make sure there are no hidden characters such as line feeds or tabs in the query.
3. Next, you'll define the columns to use when working with the data in R.
For example, in the smaller data set, you need only three factor levels, because the query will return data for only three
states. You can reuse the statesToKeep variable to identify the correct levels to include.
R
importColInfo<list(
gender=list(type="factor",levels=c("1","2"),newLevels=c("Male",
"Female")),
cardholder=list(type="factor",levels=c("1","2"),newLevels=c("Principal",
"Secondary")),
state=list(type="factor",levels=as.character(statesToKeep),newLevels=
names(statesToKeep))
)

4. Set the compute context to local, because you want all the data available on your local computer.
R
rxSetComputeContext("local")

5. Create the data source object by passing all the variables that you just defined as arguments to RxSqlServerData.
R
sqlServerImportDS<RxSqlServerData(
connectionString=sqlConnString,
sqlQuery=importQuery,
colInfo=importColInfo)

6. Then, call rxImport to save the data in the current working directory, in a file named ccFraudSub.xdf.
R
localDS<rxImport(inData=sqlServerImportDS,
outFile="ccFraudSub.xdf",
overwrite=TRUE)

The localDs object returned by the rxImport function is a lightweight RxXdfData data source object that represents the
ccFraud.xdf data file stored locally on disk.
7. Call rxGetVarInfo on the XDF file to verify that the data schema is the same.
R
rxGetVarInfo(data=localDS)

Results
rxGetVarInfo(data = localDS)
Var 1: gender, Type: factor, no factor levels available
Var 2: cardholder, Type: factor, no factor levels available
Var 3: balance, Type: integer, Low/High: (0, 22463)
Var 4: state, Type: factor, no factor levels available
8. You can now call various R functions to analyze the localDs object, just as you would with the source data on SQL Server.
For example:
R
rxSummary(~gender+cardholder+balance+state,data=localDS)

Now that you've mastered the use of compute contexts and working with various data sources, it's time to try something fun.
In the next and final lesson, you'll create a simple simulation using a custom R function and run it on the remote server.

Next Step
Lesson 5: Create a Simple Simulation Data Science Deep Dive

Previous Step
Lesson 4: Analyze Data in Local Compute Context Data Science Deep Dive

See Also
Data Science Deep Dive: Using the RevoScaleR Packages
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