Recent Posts by Sherry LaMonica

Oracle R Distribution version 3.4.4 is now released on Oracle Linux 6 and Linux 7 yum channels. This update, code named "Someone to Lean On", is a maintenance release for the R-3.4.x series, but a major update to the R Language engine since the release of Oracle R Distribution 3.3.0. R Engine Updates The R-3.4.x series brings several major changes aimed at improving the performance of R programs. The Just-In-Time (JIT) byte-code compiler is now enabled by default. R will...

When installing R packages on Linux 6, a common issue is that the native GCC compiler is not sufficient for building C++ 2011 standard code.  In some cases, the R package developer will identify the C++11 requirement on the package's CRAN site or in the compilation log. Or, the build log may simply return errors indicating the C++11 support is not available:   cc1plus: error: unrecognized command line option "-std=c++11" To work around this issue, you can install and enable...

The R ecosystem offers numerous packages for performing data analysis. Currently, the CRAN package repository features over 14,000 available packages! A key benefit to using R is the endless support it gets from statisticians, developers, and data science experts around the world. The CRAN repository offers R packages in Linux source format, or as binaries for Windows and MacOS.  If you are installing R packages on another Operating System such as Solaris, you will need to...

When simultaneously learning a new tool and working toward a deliverable deadline, getting timely help with technical problems is critical. If you work with R/Oracle R Distribution, Oracle R Enterprise, or Oracle R Advanced Analytics for Hadoop and need to engage support resources, we recommend doing everything you can to expedite a solution to the problem you are facing. The following tips on working effectively with support will enable more efficient communication, leading...

One reason R has become so popular is the vast array of add-on packages available at the CRAN and Bioconductor repositories. R's package system along with the CRAN framework provides a process for authoring, documenting and distributing packages to millions of users.  However, users and administrators wanting to build packages requiring C++ on 64-bit Solaris SPARC systems often are unable to compile their packages using Oracle Developer Studio.   R uses $R_HOME/etc/Makeconf a...

After a database upgrade, a set of maintenance steps is required to update the new ORACLE_HOME with the entire set of ORE components.  For example, if the proper migration steps are not followed, ORE embedded R functions will return errors such as:   ORA-28578: protocol error during callback from an external procedure The ORE server installation consists of three components: Oracle Database schema (RQSYS) and schema-related objects. Oracle Database shared libraries for...

We recently updated the Oracle R Distribution (ORD) benchmarks for version 3.3.0. ORD is based on open source R-3.3.0 and adds support for dynamically loading  linear algebra performance libraries installed on your system. This includes Intel's Math Kernel Library (MKL), AMD's ACML, and Sun Performance Library for Solaris, which enable optimized, multi-threaded math routines to provide relevant R functions maximum performance. The benchmark results demonstrate the performance...

Oracle R Distribution version 3.3.0 is released on all supported platforms. This release, code-named "Supposedly Educational", contains several significant bug fixes and improvements to R, including:  Support for downloading data from secure https-enabled sites using download.file  Speed improvements for a number of low-level R functions called by higher-level, commonly used functions. These include speedups for vector selection with boolean data, function argument...

Users of Oracle R Enterprise (ORE) embedded R execution will often calibrate R models in a development environment and promote the final models to a production database. In most cases, the development and production databases are distinct, and model serialization between databases is not effective if the underlying tables are not identical.  To facilitate the migration process, ORE includes scripts to transport the ORE system schema, RQSYS, and ORE objects such as...