Customize the default connections in the Connections Pane

[rnorberg]

Motivation

One of the main reasons we've purchased RStudio Server Pro is to make it as easy as possible for our employees to be productive using R at work. As an R admin, I want to make the path from "I want to use R at work" to "I'm using R at work productively" as short as possible. Without RStudio Server, a potential new R user has to do all of the following before they're ready to do analysis on actual company data:

1. Install R on their machine
2. Install RStudio Desktop
3. Configure R to point to our internal package repository
4. Install database drivers
5. Figure out how to connect to a database
6. Figure out how to get data out of the database into R

Just having RStudio Server Pro allows me to replace steps 1 - 4 with "go to this URL". That's great! But can I do something to help with 5 and 6 as well?

Making better default connections

In RStudio Server's Connections pane, when you click "New Connection", you see a list of the ODBC drivers that are installed and clicking on one leads to a prompt for the necessary connection details.

Like most companies, we have a couple of big databases that hold the majority of data a user might be interested in accessing. And I know what the server name, port, etc is for those databases, so wouldn't it be great if I could fill in that box that pops up, so that new users don't have to chase down all of the connection details? Well, it turns out I can.

Following the guide here (specifically the part about Snippet Files), I added named connections for our company's most commonly used databases.

Here's a screenshot of "New Connection" menu after I created /etc/rstudio/conections/Analytics Data Mart.R per the instructions linked above.

So now the path from "I want to use R at work" to "I'm using R at work productively" has just 3 steps:

1. Go to my-rstudio-server-DNS in your browser and log in
2. Select a connection from the Connections pane and connect to a databse
3. Figure out how to get data out of the database into R

Next I'm working on a First Project Template to make step 3 as smooth as possible for new users!

[Blair09M]

This sounds great! Happy to hear that Snippet Files are proving useful. Always good to hear these success stories!

[nathan]

+1 for RStudio Extensions. Not many people take advantage of RStudio's extensibility features. Nice work.

[cderv]

@rnorberg

Following the guide here (specifically the part about Snippet Files), I added named connections for our company's most commonly used databases.

Out of curiosity, how did you manage database credential in your case ?

On my side, I am using DSN on the system to add a new connection button. Recently, we are working on a package that hide credentials and offer a shiny miniUI to choose the database connection.

What to do with credentials is a challenge, but I wonder if it is because our surrounding environment is not suitable and not ease things at all.

I'll be happy to have your experience. Thanks !