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Spatial Database for GPS Wildlife Tracking Data pp 213–229Cite as

A Step Further in the Integration of Data Management and Analysis: Pl/R

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Abstract

This chapter introduces the Pl/R extension, a very powerful alternative to integrate the features offered by R in the database in a gapless workflow. Pl/R is a loadable procedural language that allows the use of the R engine and libraries directly inside the database, thus embedding R scripts into SQL statements and database functions and triggers. Among many advantages, Pl/R avoids unnecessary data replication, allows the use of a single SQL interface for complex scripts involving R queries and offers a tight integration of data analysis and management processes into the database. In this chapter, you will have a basic overview of the potential of Pl/R for the study of GPS locations. You will be introduced to the use of Pl/R, starting with exercises involving simple calculations in R (logarithms, median and quantiles), followed by more elaborated exercises designed to compute the daylight times of a given location at a given date, or to compute complex home range methods.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See the official website here: http://www.joeconway.com/web/guest/pl/r.

  2. 2.

    See http://www.joeconway.com/plr/doc/plr-install.html for more details.

  3. 3.

    To download and install R, check your preferred CRAN mirror: http://cran.r-project.org/mirrors.html.

  4. 4.

    See http://www.joeconway.com/plr/doc/plr-data.html.

  5. 5.

    http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.2/static/functions-aggregate.html.

  6. 6.

    http://www.joeconway.com/plr/doc/plr-pgsql-support-funcs.html.

  7. 7.

    See the list on CRAN: http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/available_packages_by_name.html.

  8. 8.

    This example is based on, and extends, a tutorial from George MacKerron: http://blog.mackerron.com/2012/10/15/sunrise-sunset-postgis-plr/.

  9. 9.

    For more details, see: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/grad/solcalc/calcdetails.html.

  10. 10.

    See: http://www.joeconway.com/plr/doc/plr-module-funcs.html.

  11. 11.

    See ?timezone in R for more details on the time zone format.

  12. 12.

    http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/adehabitatHR/.

  13. 13.

    See for instance MapServer: http://mapserver.org/.

  14. 14.

    See an example here: http://www.joeconway.com/web/guest/pl/r/-/wiki/Main/Bytea+Graphing+Example.

  15. 15.

    Another solution might be to use the TerraLib library, which involves another set of dependencies: http://www.terralib.org/.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Fort Lauderdale Research and Education Center, University of Florida, 3205 College Avenue, Fort Lauderdale, FL, 33314, USA

    Mathieu Basille

  2. Università Iuav di Venezia, Santa Croce 191 Tolentini, 30135, Venice, Italy

    Ferdinando Urbano

  3. credativ LLC, 270 E Douglas Avenue, El Cajon, CA, 92020, USA

    Joe Conway

Authors
  1. Mathieu Basille
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  2. Ferdinando Urbano
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  3. Joe Conway
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mathieu Basille .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Università Iuav di Venezia, Venice, Italy

    Ferdinando Urbano

  2. Research and Innovation Centre, Fondazione Edmund Mach, San Michele all’Adige, Trento, Italy

    Francesca Cagnacci

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© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Basille, M., Urbano, F., Conway, J. (2014). A Step Further in the Integration of Data Management and Analysis: Pl/R. In: Urbano, F., Cagnacci, F. (eds) Spatial Database for GPS Wildlife Tracking Data. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03743-1_11

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