Alex, Alex Park schrieb:
1) Is using Visual Basic the best choice or are there significant advantages of using C# or C++ within .NET? For example, are there performance advantages of using C++ over VB when it comes to processing large amounts of data, and especially if there are lots of loops involved etc? What do people think?
It depends. For performance reasons, C++ will have advantages if you're doing _real_ and optimized C++, otherwise C# or VB.NET will perform the same (or even better).
Depending on what "large amounts of data" means for you, it would be a better choice to load the data from the database directly in R, but I'm not sure, if this will give you better results (has anybody tested this?)
Transfer of data using C++, C# or VB.NET should be fast enough. We've successfully transferred arrays with thousands of elements in an interactive program and have not yet experienced problems there.
Concerning languages in general, I'd recommend using C#, as VB.NET is similar to VB(6), but not the same. And switching back to VB6 for some apps could cause problems, as you're then suited to VB.NET.
2) In my mind, I was thinking that I could place my data in the database that comes with .NET, use ADO to retrieve the data I required, and then pass this to R to get the desired output. I am wondering though whether it would be better to build lots or routines in R and let them call the data from the directly from the database i.e. I just use VB front end to execute pre-configured routine in R which will automatically use SQL functionality to retrieve the required data? Again, any thoughts on this?
I've not yet done tests, but in theory loading the data directly from within R should be faster. But this of course depends on the database frontend in R. ADO.NET is said to be quite fast and data transfer from an application to R should be fast enough. Maybe you should give ADO.NET a try (as it allows easy and fast prototyping) and just find out if the performance is good enough for you.
3) I have managed to poke around the internet (R.org, Nabble etc.) and have managed to get together some introductory papers on using R(COM) with .NET. Is there an 'official' guide that I am missing or can anybody point to any useful sources that might help me get started?
Look into the WIKI at rcom.univie.ac.at. You will find slides from a presentation on UseR!2006 with some examples on .NET.
Thomas _______________________________________________ Rcom-l mailing list Rcom-l@mailman.csd.univie.ac.at http://mailman.csd.univie.ac.at/mailman/listinfo/rcom-l More information (including a Wiki) at http://rcom.univie.ac.at
