Importing .dbf files in Microsoft R Server

First published on MSDN on Nov 16, 2016
The dBASE database file with the .dbf file extension is not supported by Microsoft R Server's rxImport. rxImport function is used to import data into an '.xdf' file or data.frame.

Alternatively, .dbf file can be converted into a data.frame using the CRAN package called foreign . The data.frame can then be converted into an .xdf file, using rxImport.

Here's an example:


Output:
> rxGetInfo(file_content)
Data frame: file_content
Number of observations: 67
Number of variables: 15
Using rxImport, this data.frame can then be converted into a .xdf file:
> rxImport(inData = file_content, outFile = "output_dbase.xdf")
Rows Read: 67, Total Rows Processed: 67, Total Chunk Time: 0.002 seconds
> rxGetInfo("output_dbase.xdf")
File name: $path_to_file_output_dbase.xdf
Number of observations: 67
Number of variables: 15
Number of blocks: 1
Compression type: zlib