Lesson 2: Create and Run R Scripts Data

Science Deep Dive

SQL Server 2016 and later

Updated: October 26, 2016

Applies To: SQL Server 2016
Now that youve set up your data sources and established one or several compute contexts, youre ready to run some high
powered R scripts using SQL Server. In this lesson, you'll use the server compute context to do some common machine learning
tasks:
Visualize data and generate some summary statistics
Create a linear regression model
Create a logistic regression model
Score new data and create a histogram of the scores

Change Compute Context to the Server

Before you run any R code, you need to specify the current or active compute context.
1. To activate a compute context that you've already defined using R, use the rxSetComputeContext function as shown here:
R
rxSetComputeContext(sqlCompute)

As soon as you run this statement, all subsequent computations will take place on the SQL Server computer specified in
the sqlCompute parameter.
2. If you decide that you'd rather run the R code on your workstation, you can switch the compute context back to the local
computer by using the local keyword.
R
rxSetComputeContext("local")

For a list of other keywords supported by this function, type help("rxSetComputeContext") from an R command line.

Note

After you've specified a compute context, it remains active until you change it. However, any R scripts that cannot be run in a
remote server context will be run locally.

Compute Summary Statistics

To see how the compute context works, try generating some summary statistics using the sqlFraudDS data source. Remember,
the data source object just defines the data you'll use; it doesn't change the compute context.
To perform the summary locally, use rxSetComputeContext and specify the "local" keyword.
To create the same calculations on the SQL Server computer, switch to the SQL compute context you defined earlier.
1. Call the rxSummary function and pass required arguments, such as the formula and the data source, and assign the
results to the variable sumOut.
R
sumOut<rxSummary(formula=~gender+balance+numTrans+numIntlTrans+creditLine,
data=sqlFraudDS)

The R language provides many summary functions, but rxSummary supports execution on various remote compute
contexts, including SQL Server . For more information about similar functions, see Data Summaries in the ScaleR
reference.
2. When processing is done, you can print the contents of the sumOut variable to the console.
R
sumOut

Note

Don't try to print the results before they have returned from the SQL Server computer, or you might get an error.
Results
Summary Statistics Results for: ~gender + balance + numTrans +
numIntlTrans + creditLine
Data: sqlFraudDS (RxSqlServerData Data Source)
Number of valid observations: 10000
Name Mean StdDev Min Max ValidObs MissingObs
balance 4075.0318 3926.558714 0 25626 100000
numTrans 29.1061 26.619923 0 100 10000 0 100000
numIntlTrans 4.0868 8.726757 0 60 10000 0 100000

creditLine 9.1856 9.870364 1 75 10000 0 100000 Category Counts for gender

Number of categories: 2
Number of valid observations: 10000
Number of missing observations: 0
gender Counts
Male 6154
Female 3846

Add Maximum and Minimum Values

Based on the computed summary statistics, you've discovered some useful information about the data that you want to put into
the data source for use in further computations. For example, the minimum and maximum values can be used to compute
histograms, so you decide to add the high and low values to the RxSqlServerData data source.
Fortunately R Services InDatabase includes optimized functions that can very efficiently convert integer data to categorical
factor data.
1. Start by setting up some temporary variables.
R
sumDF<sumOut$sDataFrame
var<sumDF$Name

2. Use the variable ccColInfo that you created earlier to define the columns in the data source.
You'll also add to some new computed columns numTrans, numIntlTrans, and creditLine to the column collection.
R
ccColInfo<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(1:51),
newLevels=stateAbb),
balance=list(type="numeric"),
numTrans=list(type="factor",
levels=as.character(sumDF[var=="numTrans","Min"]:sumDF[var=="numTrans",
"Max"])),
numIntlTrans=list(type="factor",
levels=as.character(sumDF[var=="numIntlTrans","Min"]:sumDF[var
=="numIntlTrans","Max"])),
creditLine=list(type="numeric")
)

3. Having updated the column collection, you can apply the following statement to create an updated version of the SQL
Server data source that you defined earlier.
R
sqlFraudDS<RxSqlServerData(
connectionString=sqlConnString,
table=sqlFraudTable,
colInfo=ccColInfo,
rowsPerRead=sqlRowsPerRead)

The sqlFraudDS data source now includes the new columns added in ccColInfo.
These modifications affect only the data source object in R; no new data has been written to the database table yet. However,
you can use the data captured in the sumOut variable to create visualizations and summaries. In the next step you'll learn how to
do this while switching compute contexts.

Tip
If you forget which compute context you're using, use rxGetComputeContext(). If the return value is RxLocalSeqCompute
Context, you're using the local compute context.

Next Step
Visualize SQL Server Data using R Data Science Deep Dive

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Define and Use Compute Contexts Data Science Deep Dive
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