From rpeng at jhsph.edu  Tue Jul 24 21:39:32 2012
From: rpeng at jhsph.edu (Roger D. Peng)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2012 15:39:32 -0400
Subject: [Rd] On RObjectTables
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.2.02.1207240811480.2174@luke-Latitude>
References: <CABFfbXv480ciNg3vphvwwvZvX03vvWABGRRT8a7SgRn25wPXgg@mail.gmail.com>
	<alpine.LFD.2.02.1207200928200.1918@nokomis.stat.uiowa.edu>
	<CAOQ5NydxVJG4gHxk60=_xLwVUVvN+t7N+CHwwV=p=a7MUg9yJA@mail.gmail.com>
	<CABFfbXtUCTpFdYs2AXToXx6_+XNdZBE_Z1c-cEopdVr4C+DjMg@mail.gmail.com>
	<alpine.DEB.2.02.1207240811480.2174@luke-Latitude>
Message-ID: <CAE_NaA07PkotX4KUnauToDQvOVQWzmD0zCqKXMSREzVMrCCFhQ@mail.gmail.com>

I was thinking that the RObjectTables appeared before the active
binding stuff was introduced. On quick examination, it seems the
active binding mechanism might be a more stable way to go. That's how
it was done in filehash.

-roger

On Tue, Jul 24, 2012 at 9:15 AM,  <luke-tierney at uiowa.edu> wrote:
> In my original reply I wrote
>
>
>>> The
>>> facility in its current form does complicate the internal code and
>>> limit some experiments we might otherwise do, so I would not be
>>> surprised if it was at least substantially changed in the next year or
>>> two.
>
>
> This is obviously _not_ the time to invest effort in documenting or
> expanding this facility. If you want to use it, go ahead. But you will
> have to figure things out from what you have and be prepared for
> changes under your feet.
>
> If active bindings can do what you want that may be a safer route to
> consider.
>
> luke
>
>
> On Tue, 24 Jul 2012, Jeroen Ooms wrote:
>
>> Maybe it is worth considering to document this functionality a bit
>> more, or expose some wrappers in R? It's a bit obscure right now,
>> which seems both dangerous in terms of maintenance and a missed
>> opportunity (especially if people are already building on it).
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Jul 24, 2012 at 2:06 AM, Michael Lawrence
>> <lawrence.michael at gene.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> Luke,
>>>
>>> Please keep me advised on this, because the Qt interfaces heavily rely on
>>> the ObjectTables (btw, it has worked great for my use cases).
>>>
>>> Michael
>>>
>>>
>>> On Fri, Jul 20, 2012 at 7:32 AM, <luke-tierney at uiowa.edu> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I believe everyone who has worked on the relevant files has tried to
>>>> maintain this functionality, but as it seems to get used and tested
>>>> very little I can't be sure it is functional at this point. The
>>>> facility in its current form does complicate the internal code and
>>>> limit some experiments we might otherwise do, so I would not be
>>>> surprised if it was at least substantially changed in the next year or
>>>> two.
>>>>
>>>> Best,
>>>>
>>>> luke
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, 19 Jul 2012, Jeroen Ooms wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I was wondering if anyone knows more about the state of RObjectTables.
>>>>> This
>>>>> largely undocumented functionality was introduced by Duncan around 2002
>>>>> somewhere and enables you create an environment where the contents are
>>>>> dynamically queried by R through a hook function. It is mentioned in R
>>>>> Internals and ?attach. This functionality is quite powerful and allows
>>>>> you
>>>>> to e.g. offload a big database of R objects to disk, yet use them as if
>>>>> they were in your workspace. The recent RProtoBuf package also uses
>>>>> some of
>>>>> this functionality to dynamically lookup proto definitions.
>>>>>
>>>>> I would like to do something similar, but I am not sure if support for
>>>>> this
>>>>> functionality will be or has been discontinued. The RObjectTables
>>>>> package
>>>>> is no longer available on OmegaHat and nothing has not been mentioned
>>>>> on
>>>>> the mailing lists for about 5 years. I found an old version of the
>>>>> package
>>>>> no github which seems to work, but as far as I understand, the package
>>>>> still needs the hooks from within R to work. So if this functionality
>>>>> is
>>>>> actually unsupported and might be removed at some point, I should
>>>>> probably
>>>>> not invest in it.
>>>>>
>>>>>         [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>>>>>
>>>>> ______________________________________________
>>>>> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>>>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Luke Tierney
>>>> Chair, Statistics and Actuarial Science
>>>> Ralph E. Wareham Professor of Mathematical Sciences
>>>> University of Iowa                  Phone:             319-335-3386
>>>> Department of Statistics and        Fax:               319-335-3017
>>>>    Actuarial Science
>>>> 241 Schaeffer Hall                  email:   luke-tierney at uiowa.edu
>>>> Iowa City, IA 52242                 WWW:  http://www.stat.uiowa.edu
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ______________________________________________
>>>> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>
> --
> Luke Tierney
> Chair, Statistics and Actuarial Science
> Ralph E. Wareham Professor of Mathematical Sciences
> University of Iowa                  Phone:             319-335-3386
> Department of Statistics and        Fax:               319-335-3017
>    Actuarial Science
> 241 Schaeffer Hall                  email:   luke-tierney at uiowa.edu
> Iowa City, IA 52242                 WWW:  http://www.stat.uiowa.edu
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel



-- 
Roger D. Peng  |  http://www.biostat.jhsph.edu/~rpeng/



[Rd] On RObjectTables
Roger D. Peng