I have three blog posts on installing and using R in SQL Server.
First, installing SQL Server R Services:
I’m excited that CTP 3 of SQL Server 2016 is publicly available, in no small part because it is our first look at SQL Server R Services. In this post, I’m going to walk through installing Don’t-Call-It-SSRS on a machine.
Then, using RODBC to connect a Linux machine with RStudio installed to a SQL Server instance:
Getting a Linux machine to talk to a SQL Server instance is harder than it should be. Yes, Microsoft has a Linux ODBC driver and some easy setup instructions…if you’re using Red Hat or SuSE. Hopefully this helps you get connected.
If you’re using RStudio on Windows, it’s a lot easier: create a DSN using your ODBC Data Sources.
Finally, using SQL Server R Services:
So, what’s the major use of SQL Server R Services? Early on, I see batch processing as the main driver here. The whole point of getting involved with Revolution R is to create sever-quality R, so imagine a SQL Agent job which runs this procedure once a night against some raw data set. The R job could build a model, process that data, and return a result set. You take that result set and feed it into a table for reporting purposes. I’d like to see more uses, but this is probably the first one we’ll see in the wild.
It’s a preview of a V1 product. Keep that in mind.
The first and third posts are for CTP 3, so beware the time-sensitive material warnings.