NEWS.md

Version 0.3.0

RSQLServer was archived by CRAN after dplyr v0.4 irredeemably broke the dplyr SQL Server backend provided by this package. Well we are back on CRAN and there have been a lot of changes since you last saw this package including improvements to the DBI backend, compatibility with the latest iteration of the dplyr/dbplyr backend and removing the reliance on RJDBC's middleware.

The next version of this package will likely swap the jTDS driver for the official Microsoft JDBC driver and make further interface changes to better align with the more explicit interface specifications in the DBI package.

DBI backend

A number of changes have been made to improve DBI compliance as specified by tests in the DBItest package (#60):

• fetch() on non-query statements return an empty data frame
• Nested transactions throw errors with related change of dbWriteTable() code now being wrapped in dbWithTransaction()
• dbDataType() works for AsIs objects and returns NVARCHAR and VARBINARY SQL types with lengths of at least one
• dbHasCompleted() returns TRUE for empty ResultSets
• dbDisconnect() returns a warning if called on a connection that is already closed and otherwise closes the connection and returns TRUE.
• dbGetInfo() for SQLServerConnection now complies with DBItest expectations
• dbGetInfo() for SQLServerDriver returns the JDBC driver version (3.0) as driver.version and jTDS verion as client.version instead of the jTDS client version and NA respectively.
• SQLServer() no longer accepts arguments
• Bumped DBI requirement

A number of other changes have been made to the DBI backend:

• Implemented dbBegin(), dbCommit(), dbRollback() methods for DBI generics
• dbWriteTable() is faster by always using transactions (BEGIN before and COMMIT after), and optionally much faster by way of the batch option.
• Changed API for dbWriteTable() to match generic documented in the DBI package. It also now returns TRUE invisibly.
• dbWriteTable() now fails when attempting to append to a temporary table (#75)
• Implemented dbSendStatement() method which required the extension of SQLServerResult to SQLServerUpdateResult the latter of which is used to dispatch the dbGetRowsAffected() method (#95). Added batch option to both dbSendStatement() and dbSendQuery() for insert/update speedup (#69, #90, #106, @r2evans).
• Implemented dbBind() method to replace the internal .fillStatementParameter() method which required the extension of SQLServerResult to SQLServerPreResult the latter of which allows statements with bindings to present a ResultSet interface to DBI (ResultSets are only created after values are bound to parameterised statements in JDBC). (#88)
• dbBind() now supports multi-row binding (e.g., for INSERT and UPDATE)
• Implemented sqlCreateTable() for SQLServerConnection which is called by db_create_table(). (#76)
• dbDataType maps R character objects of sufficiently long length to VARCHAR(MAX) on newer version of MSSQL rather than TEXT as the latter is being deprecated.
• Arguments of dbConnect() are now NULL where other default values were assigned. This does not change the behaviour of the method.
• Introduced pattern argument to dbListTables() which allows you to list all tables matching a pattern.
• dbExistsTable() now passed table name to dbListTables() as a pattern to be matched which should improve its performance.
• dbColumnInfo() succeeds in running (#96, @r2evans)
• dbGetInfo() method for SQLServerResult has been removed and calls the default DBI method which calls dbHasCompleted(), dbGetRowCount() etc. The latter methods have been implemented for SQLServerResult and are exported.
• dbIsValid() implemented for SQLServerDriver and always returns TRUE.
• Now rely on DBI supplied show() methods

dplyr/dbplyr backend

A number of changes were made to dplyr backend including a refactoring of its code across to the newer dbplyr package. As a result, dplyr >= 0.7.0 is required:

• src_desc() defunct in favour of db_desc()
• Implemented db_create_table(), db_write_table() and db_insert_into()for SQLServerConnection
• db_drop_table() supports the IF EXISTS SQL clause if supported by SQL Server (#75)
• New temporary argument to db_insert_into() which overwrites existing table if set to TRUE and if necessary.
• sql_select() method supports the DISTINCT keyword and includes TOP keyword when query results are ordered.
• compute() and copy_to() implementations are replaced by db_compute() and db_copy_to() implementations
• db_explain() is more informative (e.g. prints relative cost of operations)
• db_analyze() unsupported and simply returns TRUE.
• db_query_fields() method for SQLServerConnection removed in favour of default dplyr method. The latter better handles sub-queries.
• intersect() and setdiff() methods are removed in favour of default dplyr methods.
• as.numeric() and as.character() calls now cast scalar input values to SQL types FLOAT and NVARCHAR(4000) respectively rather than NUMERIC and TEXT respectively (default in dplyr).
• Added basic testing of dplyr backend (#81)

RJDBC

This package no longer depends on RJDBC. As such a number of user visible changes have been made:

• dbSendQuery() only executes queries rather than other arbitrary SQL statements. See rstats-db/DBI#20. It also no longer supports calling stored procedures (callable statements).
• dbSendQuery() can execute parameterised queries. See ?DBI:dbBind for more details on parameterised queries.
• dbSendUpdate() which was based on RJDBC's method and which executes non-query SQL statements will be deprecated in favour of the more descriptive dbExecute() which has been implemented upstream in DBI (the latter of which calls dbSendStatement()). See rstats-db/DBI#20. Unlike RJDBC's dbSendUpdate(), dbExecute() does not yet support calling stored procedures as these do not seem to be explicitly supported by any other DBI backend.
• dbExecute() arguments have been changed to reflect the DBI generic.
• Implemented dbUnloadDriver() which returns TRUE in all instances rather than FALSE as was the case in RJDBC.

A number of previously imported RJDBC methods have now been reimplemented in this package with no user visible changes.

Other changes

• Added Travis-CI (#83, #84) and Appveyor support (#80, @Hong-Revo)
• Correctly determine major version of SQL Server DB backend (#122)
• dplyr's arrange() method now returns whole result rather than top 100 rows (#124). This was implemented by changing the default behaviour of sql_select() method and may result in breaks to existing code.

Version 0.2.0

Major changes

• Implements a SQL backend to dplyr (#4) including SQL translations for as.POSIXct and as.Date (#43)
• dbConnect() interface has been enhanced but breaks backward compatibility consequently enhanced. Server details can be specified in a YAML file which are passed to dbConnect. See ?SQLServer (#8)

Enhancements

• fetch() now processes the data frame returned by RJDBC::fetch() to better map database field types to their equivalents in R such as integer, logical, Date, POSIXct and raw. (#31, #47)
• dbWriteTable() can now write Date, POSIXct and other non-character and non-numeric field types to equivalent SQL representations (#32)

Other changes

• Azure hosted SQL Server support (#3)
• Downgraded bundled jTDS from 1.3.1 to 1.2.8 (#9)
• Improved DBI compliance (#35).
• Untested supported for Sybase in jtds_url()
• NEWS now in markdown (NEWS.md)

Version 0.1.1

• implemented and exported dbIsValid methods for SQLServerConnection and SQLServerResult (#1)

Version 0.1

• Initial release