NEWS in package ‘DBI’

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Changes in version 1.1.2 (2021-12-19)

Features

• Use dbQuoteLiteral() in default method for sqlData() (#362, #371).
• Update specification with changes from DBItest 1.7.2 (#367).

Documentation

• Method documentation on pkgdown is clickable and contains methods from all known DBI backends except ROracle (#360).
• ?Id gains better examples (#295, #370).
• Elaborate on status of dbWriteTable() in the documentation (#352, #372).
• Make method definition more similar to S3. All setMethod() calls refer to top-level functions (#368).
• The pkgdown documentation for DBI generics (e.g. ?dbConnect) contains clickable links to many known backends, and an explanatory sentence (#360).
• ?dbReadTable and other pages gain pointers to Id() and SQL() (#359).

Changes in version 1.1.1 (2021-01-04)

Documentation

• Expand "Get started" vignette to two tutorials, basic and advanced (#332, @jawond).

Bug fixes

• dbAppendTable() now allows columns named sep (#336).
• dbAppendTable() shows a better error message if the input has zero columns (#313).
• sqlInterpolate() now correctly interprets consecutive comments (#329, @rnorberg).
• dbQuoteLiteral() works for difftime objects (#325).
• dbQuoteLiteral() quotes dates as YYYY-MM-DD without time zone (#331).

Internal

• Switch to GitHub Actions (#326).
• Update URL in DESCRIPTION.

Changes in version 1.1.0 (2019-12-15)

New features

• New DBIConnector class (#280).

• Specify immediate argument to dbSendQuery(), dbGetQuery(), dbSendStatement() and dbExecute() (#268).

• Use specification for dbGetInfo() (#271).

• dbUnquoteIdentifier() now supports Id() objects with catalog members (#266, @raffscallion). It also handles unquoted identifiers of the form table, schema.table or catalog.schema.table, for compatibility with dbplyr.

Documentation

• New DBI intro article (#286, @cutterkom).

• Add pkgdown reference index (#288).

• DBI specification on https://dbi.r-dbi.org/dev/articles/spec now comes with a table of contents and code formatting.

• Update examples to refer to params instead of param (#235).

• Improved documentation for sqlInterpolate() (#100). Add usage of SQL() to sqlInterpolate() examples (#259, @renkun-ken).

• Improve documentation for Id.

Internal

• Add tests for dbUnquoteIdentifier() (#279, @baileych).

• sqlInterpolate() uses dbQuoteLiteral() instead of checking the type of the input.

• Avoid partial argument match in dbWriteTable() (#246, @richfitz).

Changes in version 1.0.0 (2018-05-02)

New generics

• New dbAppendTable() that by default calls sqlAppendTableTemplate() and then dbExecute() with a param argument, without support for row.names argument (#74).
• New dbCreateTable() that by default calls sqlCreateTable() and then dbExecute(), without support for row.names argument (#74).
• New dbCanConnect() generic with default implementation (#87).
• New dbIsReadOnly() generic with default implementation (#190, @anhqle).

Changes

• sqlAppendTable() now accepts lists for the values argument, to support lists of SQL objects in R 3.1.
• Add default implementation for dbListFields(DBIConnection, Id), this relies on dbQuoteIdentifier(DBIConnection, Id) (#75).

Documentation updates

• The DBI specification vignette is rendered correctly from the installed package (#234).
• Update docs on how to cope with stored procedures (#242, @aryoda).
• Add "Additional arguments" sections and more examples for dbGetQuery(), dbSendQuery(), dbExecute() and dbSendStatement().
• The dbColumnInfo() method is now fully specified (#75).
• The dbListFields() method is now fully specified (#75).
• The dynamic list of methods in help pages doesn't contain methods in DBI anymore.

Bug fixes

• Pass missing value argument to secondary dbWriteTable() call (#737, @jimhester).
• The Id class now uses <Id> and not <Table> when printing.
• The default dbUnquoteIdentifier() implementation now complies to the spec.

Changes in version 0.8 (2018-02-24)

Breaking changes

• SQL() now strips the names from the output if the names argument is unset.
• The dbReadTable(), dbWriteTable(), dbExistsTable(), dbRemoveTable(), and dbListFields() generics now specialize over the first two arguments to support implementations with the Id S4 class as type for the second argument. Some packages may need to update their documentation to satisfy R CMD check again.

New generics

• Schema support: Export Id(), new generics dbListObjects() and dbUnquoteIdentifier(), methods for Id that call dbQuoteIdentifier() and then forward (#220).
• New dbQuoteLiteral() generic. The default implementation uses switchpatch to avoid dispatch ambiguities, and forwards to dbQuoteString() for character vectors. Backends may override methods that also dispatch on the second argument, but in this case also an override for the "SQL" class is necessary (#172).

Default implementations

• Default implementations of dbQuoteIdentifier() and dbQuoteLiteral() preserve names, default implementation of dbQuoteString() strips names (#173).
• Specialized methods for dbQuoteString() and dbQuoteIdentifier() are available again, for compatibility with clients that use getMethod() to access them (#218).
• Add default implementation of dbListFields().
• The default implementation of dbReadTable() now has row.names = FALSE as default and also supports row.names = NULL (#186).

API changes

• The SQL() function gains an optional names argument which can be used to assign names to SQL strings.

Deprecated generics

• dbListConnections() is soft-deprecated by documentation.
• dbListResults() is deprecated by documentation (#58).
• dbGetException() is soft-deprecated by documentation (#51).
• The deprecated print.list.pairs() has been removed.

Bug fixes

• Fix dbDataType() for AsIs object (#198, @yutannihilation).
• Fix dbQuoteString() and dbQuoteIdentifier() to ignore invalid UTF-8 strings (r-dbi/DBItest#156).

Documentation

• Help pages for generics now contain a dynamic list of methods implemented by DBI backends (#162).
• sqlInterpolate() now supports both named and positional variables (#216, @hannesmuehleisen).
• Point to db.rstudio.com (@wibeasley, #209).
• Reflect new 'r-dbi' organization in DESCRIPTION (@wibeasley, #207).

Internal

• Using switchpatch on the second argument for default implementations of dbQuoteString() and dbQuoteIdentifier().

Changes in version 0.7 (2017-06-17)

• Import updated specs from DBItest.
• The default implementation of dbGetQuery() now accepts an n argument and forwards it to dbFetch(). No warning about pending rows is issued anymore (#76).
• Require R >= 3.0.0 (for slots argument of setClass()) (#169, @mvkorpel).

Changes in version 0.6-1 (2017-04-01)

• Fix dbReadTable() for backends that do not provide their own implementation (#171).

Changes in version 0.6 (2017-03-08)

• Interface changes

  • Deprecated dbDriver() and dbUnloadDriver() by documentation (#21).
  • Renamed arguments to sqlInterpolate() and sqlParseVariables() to be more consistent with the rest of the interface, and added .dots argument to sqlParseVariables. DBI drivers are now expected to implement sqlParseVariables(conn, sql, ..., .dots) and sqlInterpolate(conn, sql, ...) (#147).

• Interface enhancements

  • Removed valueClass = "logical" for those generics where the return value is meaningless, to allow backends to return invisibly (#135).
  • Avoiding using braces in the definitions of generics if possible, so that standard generics can be detected (#146).
  • Added default implementation for dbReadTable().
  • All standard generics are required to have an ellipsis (with test), for future extensibility.
  • Improved default implementation of dbQuoteString() and dbQuoteIdentifier() (#77).
  • Removed tryCatch() call in dbGetQuery() (#113).

• Documentation improvements

  • Finalized first draft of DBI specification, now in a vignette.
  • Most methods now draw documentation from DBItest, only those where the behavior is not finally decided don't do this yet yet.
  • Removed max.connections requirement from documentation (#56).
  • Improved dbBind() documentation and example (#136).
  • Change omegahat.org URL to omegahat.net, the particular document still doesn't exist below the new domain.

• Internal

  • Use roxygen2 inheritance to copy DBI specification to this package.
  • Use tic package for building documentation.
  • Use markdown in documentation.

Changes in version 0.5-1 (2016-09-09)

• Documentation and example updates.

Changes in version 0.5 (2016-08-11)

• Interface changes

  • dbDataType() maps character values to "TEXT" by default (#102).
  • The default implementation of dbQuoteString() doesn't call encodeString() anymore: Neither SQLite nor Postgres understand e.g. \n in a string literal, and all of SQLite, Postgres, and MySQL accept an embedded newline (#121).

• Interface enhancements

  • New dbSendStatement() generic, forwards to dbSendQuery() by default (#20, #132).
  • New dbExecute(), calls dbSendStatement() by default (#109, @bborgesr).
  • New dbWithTransaction() that calls dbBegin() and dbCommit(), and dbRollback() on failure (#110, @bborgesr).
  • New dbBreak() function which allows aborting from within dbWithTransaction() (#115, #133).
  • Export dbFetch() and dbQuoteString() methods.

• Documentation improvements:

  • One example per function (except functions scheduled for deprecation) (#67).
  • Consistent layout and identifier naming.
  • Better documentation of generics by adding links to the class and related generics in the "See also" section under "Other DBI... generics" (#130). S4 documentation is directed to a hidden page to unclutter documentation index (#59).
  • Fix two minor vignette typos (#124, @mdsumner).
  • Add package documentation.
  • Remove misleading parts in dbConnect() documentation (#118).
  • Remove misleading link in dbDataType() documentation.
  • Remove full stop from documentation titles.
  • New help topic "DBIspec" that contains the full DBI specification (currently work in progress) (#129).
  • HTML documentation generated by staticdocs is now uploaded to https://rstats-db.github.io/DBI for each build of the "production" branch (#131).
  • Further minor changes and fixes.

• Internal

  • Use contains argument instead of representation() to denote base classes (#93).
  • Remove redundant declaration of transaction methods (#110, @bborgesr).

Changes in version 0.4-1 (2016-05-07)

• The default show() implementations silently ignore all errors. Some DBI drivers (e.g., RPostgreSQL) might fail to implement dbIsValid() or the other methods used.

Changes in version 0.4 (2016-04-30)

• New package maintainer: Kirill Müller.

• dbGetInfo() gains a default method that extracts the information from dbGetStatement(), dbGetRowsAffected(), dbHasCompleted(), and dbGetRowCount(). This means that most drivers should no longer need to implement dbGetInfo() (which may be deprecated anyway at some point) (#55).

• dbDataType() and dbQuoteString() are now properly exported.

• The default implementation for dbDataType() (powered by dbiDataType()) now also supports difftime and AsIs objects and lists of raw (#70).

• Default dbGetQuery() method now always calls dbFetch(), in a tryCatch() block.

• New generic dbBind() for binding values to a parameterised query.

• DBI gains a number of SQL generation functions. These make it easier to write backends by implementing common operations that are slightly tricky to do absolutely correctly.

  • sqlCreateTable() and sqlAppendTable() create tables from a data frame and insert rows into an existing table. These will power most implementations of dbWriteTable(). sqlAppendTable() is useful for databases that support parameterised queries.

  • sqlRownamesToColumn() and sqlColumnToRownames() provide a standard way of translating row names to and from the database.

  • sqlInterpolate() and sqlParseVariables() allows databases without native parameterised queries to use parameterised queries to avoid SQL injection attacks.

  • sqlData() is a new generic that converts a data frame into a data frame suitable for sending to the database. This is used to (e.g.) ensure all character vectors are encoded as UTF-8, or to convert R varible types (like factor) to types supported by the database.

  • The sqlParseVariablesImpl() is now implemented purely in R, with full test coverage (#83, @hannesmuehleisen).

• dbiCheckCompliance() has been removed, the functionality is now available in the DBItest package (#80).

• Added default show() methods for driver, connection and results.

• New concrete ANSIConnection class and ANSI() function to generate a dummy ANSI compliant connection useful for testing.

• Default dbQuoteString() and dbQuoteIdentifer() methods now use encodeString() so that special characters like \n are correctly escaped. dbQuoteString() converts NA to (unquoted) NULL.

• The initial DBI proposal and DBI version 1 specification are now included as a vignette. These are there mostly for historical interest.

• The new DBItest package is described in the vignette.

• Deprecated print.list.pairs().

• Removed unused dbi_dep().

Changes in version 0.3.1

• Actually export dbIsValid() :/

• dbGetQuery() uses dbFetch() in the default implementation.

Changes in version 0.3.0

New and enhanced generics

• dbIsValid() returns a logical value describing whether a connection or result set (or other object) is still valid. (#12).

• dbQuoteString() and dbQuoteIdentifier() to implement database specific quoting mechanisms.

• dbFetch() added as alias to fetch() to provide consistent name. Implementers should define methods for both fetch() and dbFetch() until fetch() is deprecated in 2015. For now, the default method for dbFetch() calls fetch().

• dbBegin() begins a transaction (#17). If not supported, DB specific methods should throw an error (as should dbCommit() and dbRollback()).

New default methods

• dbGetStatement(), dbGetRowsAffected(), dbHasCompleted(), and dbGetRowCount() gain default methods that extract the appropriate elements from dbGetInfo(). This means that most drivers should no longer need to implement these methods (#13).

• dbGetQuery() gains a default method for DBIConnection which uses dbSendQuery(), fetch() and dbClearResult().

Deprecated features

• The following functions are soft-deprecated. They are going away, and developers who use the DBI should begin preparing. The formal deprecation process will begin in July 2015, where these function will emit warnings on use.

  • fetch() is replaced by dbFetch().

  • make.db.names(), isSQLKeyword() and SQLKeywords(): a black list based approach is fundamentally flawed; instead quote strings and identifiers with dbQuoteIdentifier() and dbQuoteString().

• dbGetDBIVersion() is deprecated since it's now just a thin wrapper around packageVersion("DBI").

• dbSetDataMappings() (#9) and dbCallProc() (#7) are deprecated as no implementations were ever provided.

Other improvements

• dbiCheckCompliance() makes it easier for implementors to check that their package is in compliance with the DBI specification.

• All examples now use the RSQLite package so that you can easily try out the code samples (#4).

• dbDriver() gains a more effective search mechanism that doesn't rely on packages being loaded (#1).

• DBI has been converted to use roxygen2 for documentation, and now most functions have their own documentation files. I would love your feedback on how we could make the documentation better!

Changes in version 0.2-7

• Trivial changes (updated package fields, daj)

Changes in version 0.2-6

• Removed deprecated \synopsis in some Rd files (thanks to Prof. Ripley)

Changes in version 0.2-5

• Code cleanups contributed by Matthias Burger: avoid partial argument name matching and use TRUE/FALSE, not T/F.

• Change behavior of make.db.names.default to quote SQL keywords if allow.keywords is FALSE. Previously, SQL keywords would be name mangled with underscores and a digit. Now they are quoted using '"'.

Changes in version 0.2-4

• Changed license from GPL to LPGL

• Fixed a trivial typo in documentation

Changes in version 0.1-10

• Fixed documentation typos.

Changes in version 0.1-9

• Trivial changes.

Changes in version 0.1-8

• A trivial change due to package.description() being deprecated in 1.9.0.

Changes in version 0.1-7

• Had to do a substantial re-formatting of the documentation due to incompatibilities introduced in 1.8.0 S4 method documentation. The contents were not changed (modulo fixing a few typos). Thanks to Kurt Hornik and John Chambers for their help.

Changes in version 0.1-6

• Trivial documentation changes (for R CMD check's sake)

Changes in version 0.1-5

• Removed duplicated setGeneric("dbSetDataMappings")

Changes in version 0.1-4

• Removed the "valueClass" from some generic functions, namely, dbListConnections, dbListResults, dbGetException, dbGetQuery, and dbGetInfo. The reason is that methods for these generics could potentially return different classes of objects (e.g., the call dbGetInfo(res) could return a list of name-value pairs, while dbGetInfo(res, "statement") could be a character vector).

• Added 00Index to inst/doc

• Added dbGetDBIVersion() (simple wrapper to package.description).

Changes in version 0.1-3

• ??? Minor changes?

Changes in version 0.1-2

• An implementation based on version 4 classes and methods.
• Incorporated (mostly Tim Keitt's) comments.